Why I'm thankful for the hard times

Next week marks the end of a very long and difficult season for us as a family. My husband is about to (hopefully) finish the degree that he has been studying for throughout almost the entire duration of our marriage.

Working full time, studying full time, buying and renovating a house and bringing two small people into the world in the space of 3 years is not for the fainthearted, I will say!

But as I sit here and reflect on this intense season that is about to end, I feel a strange mix of emotions.

Relief, of course, that we will no longer have deadlines looming over us, that his time off work will actually be spent doing things that matter to us, and that the pressure of often managing everything without him will be lifted to some degree.

But actually, as I reflect on these three years, I can also see that so much of what God has done in me to change me, mold me, break me and reshape me, has been a direct result of this pressure.

Nobody likes hard things and I’m definitely no different. To say that I have found this time stressful, overwhelming and challenging is an understatement.

But the Emma of today is a very different Emma to the one of three years ago.

And I’m glad for that.

I’m glad that God has allowed us to walk through circumstances that have forced me to my knees on many an occasion.

I’m glad that I’ve been out of my depth and unable to keep it all going without asking for help from Him and from others.

I’m glad that I’ve had to come to a place of acknowledging that I’m not as capable as I would like to be, and that ‘trying harder’ isn’t always the answer.

It would be impossible to list all the ways that God has worked to change me during this time, but what I can say is that He has used these challenges. And He wants to use yours.

How often is our go-to response to difficulty to ask God to remove it from us? How often do we ask Him ‘why me Lord?’ and compare our circumstances to others, all the while feeling sorry for ourselves that we should have to bear such a load?

I know that’s often been mine (and still is, to some degree).

But what I’m sloooowly starting to realise is that, instead of asking Him to make things easier, make the problem go away or bemoan my lot in life, I can invite Him in to use this exact set of circumstances to accomplish His work in my life. Because that’s exactly how He does it.

When we ask God to change us, I think we often expect Him to wave His hands and somehow we become a different person overnight. But that’s not what it’s like.

Instead, it’s a moment by moment, day by day, season by season walk of growth. Of surrendering. Of giving Him the pain, the difficulties, the frustrations and allowing Him to use those very things to make us more like Him.

It doesn't feel glamorous, does it? That’s because it usually isn’t. It’s not page-turning, show-stopping or testimony-worthy. It’s more often just a painful process that very few people see or understand.

But when we allow Him to His work in us, through the mundane, the taxing, the unnoticed details of our lives, He starts to weave a picture that is so much more beautiful than anything we could have imagined.

Perhaps we have a problem with anxiety (as I did). We ask Him to change us, and instead of just ‘taking it away’, He brings along situations in which we have to come to terms with our weaknesses, our desire to control others, our obsession with perfection.

House renovation projects that go wrong, baby due dates that are exceeded (by two weeks!), sickness, toddler sleep regressions…anything that serves to bring us (or me, in this case) to a recognition that I am NOT IN CONTROL. And what do you know? God starts to do a work of replacing that anxiety with a deeper trust that, no matter the situation, HE is in control, not me.

Your circumstances will of course be different to mine. But it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are - what matters is that, instead of kicking and railing against them, we see them as vehicles through which God refines us. Breaks us. Remakes us.

Now that this season is finally coming to an end, I think I might just have started to grasp this. Ironically, I kind of don’t want the pressure to be taken away now because I’m finally starting to see that this is what God has used to do so much in me. But thankfully, there will no doubt be many more difficulties in store for us.

So, as I look back on this time, I’m actually thankful. I didn’t think I’d say that when I was in the midst of it, but I am truly thankful that God hasn’t left me the same person that I was before. I’m thankful that He who has begun a good work in me will complete it, and that He is working in me to produce something that is more precious than gold. I look forward to what He has in store next for me.