Life is difficult?

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck open his best selling book The Road Less Travelled with the words "Life is difficult." He went on to say, "Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly.......about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if it should be easy." 

John Maxwell adds this, "Because we want to believe life should be easy, we sometimes assume anything that's difficult must be impossible. When success eludes us, we are tempted to throw in the towel and assume it's unattainable."

Peck is right, we often feel that we deserve a life that is easy and when anything less comes our way we feel short changed. Maybe we should just face it, as the now famous quote from Malcolm Fraser states, "Life wasn't meant to be easy."

We face challenges everywhere, some minor and some which are seemingly impossible to overcome. Think back to the past and of the insurmountable problems that you have faced in your life. If you can remember them, they will mostly seem insignificant now, nothing more than a speed bump on the road of life.

As I am often telling people, "It's not the problem that determines who you are, rather it's how you handle the effects after the problem has gone away. It's how you relate to people who went through it with you and it's what you learned by the experience."

Life would be boring if we faced no challenges. Challenges are Gods' way of stretching us so that we can learn and grow and be better prepared for this wonderful life we have been given. 

So life is difficult. 

Bring it on.