You Can Do Hard Things

March 09, 2021

Jennie Allen

Bible teacher, founder of IF:Gathering

I told you guys that this season was going to be a little bit of me grabbing you by the shoulders and mama-bearing you a little bit. This is one of those weeks where I might sound a little mean. We're going to toughen up! A few weeks ago I posted something and everybody got on me and took it the wrong way and it hurt their feelings and thought I was saying something I wasn't. I read it all and candidly, some of y'alls lives are so unbelievably difficult, I respect you and grieve with you. I'm just going to go ahead and say if your life is genuinely really hard, then turn this off. I'm not talking to you. This episode is not for you. If you don't struggle with tis, well done. Go do something else! Celebrate that you're really good at this! But there's a lot of us out there that think it's hard to wear a mask in the grocery store and you are who I'm talking to today. I mean, you're critical and complaining about everything that happens all the time. We call whining in our house. I don't sit here and preach to you from a place of complete mastery. I'm speaking to myself! I have to stop sometimes too and get a little grit.

WE NEED SOME GRIT

When my daughter was about to begin running cross country - she wasn't sure she was going to - she was really fast and knew she was a good track runner, but she only did short distances. When she was in middle school and started running long distances, because she wanted to be on the cross country team with her friends, she didn't know if she could do it. So I bought her this book called Grit. She read it cover to cover and then we watched this documentary together about how women couldn't run 50 years ago because they thought it would hurt our reproductive health because it was too strenuous. Women never ran! They were never in races. Marathons and things were just for men, up until 50 years ago. It's the story of women getting to run. So she watches the documentary and reads this book, and by the time she goes to cross country - at the time I was never running, I do now because I do Orange Theory, but I never ran at this time - I started running! Because I was so inspired by the things I was doing with Kate! I was like I need to do this. We would go to the trail and run together. I hated running and I absolutely still hate it. But I did it because I wanted to show myself I could and I wanted to quit being a baby and be a good example for my daughter.

That book, Grit, teaches you that you can do anything. I mean, not really. Some of us are not going to go to the Olympics for pole vaulting, but I just mean if you set your mind to something, even if it's completely impossible or uncomfortable, you can do it. People always ask me how I write books and I'm like, you just write word after word - after a lot of pain, agony, and tears. And thousands and thousands of hours later - you have a book! It's amazing! That's how it is running a marathon. You put one foot in front of the other and keep going and keep doing it. But there's one thing that separates the people that actually do things from the people who don't - Grit. Mastering your emotions. Deciding you can. Doing the hard thing. This is my wake-up call, put on your big girl panties and let's be better than we've been through Covid. 

WE CAN HAVE GRIT BECAUSE WE HAVE HOPE

It was universally hard. Even the Christian leaders and counselors and people that are supposed to be keeping us on track, they're all falling off the track. It's hard. I get it. There's not many people on the tracks right now, which is why I'm calling us back to the tracks. Somebody needs to be on the tracks. We can do this. The reason we can do this is because we have a God that is sure, steady, and steadfast. It doesn't matter what happens to us on this earth. Even if. No matter what happens. Even if the worst happens. Even if it doesn't get better and it only gets worse. We're okay, because we have God and we have a hope that is secure in Heaven. 1 Peter 5:10 says, "after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." That's what we have. We have not just a God who says I've got you for eternity, but a God who will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you in your suffering. We have a God that is with us, keeping us firm in the midst of chaos. So how do we quit whining?

WHERE DOES A COMPLAINING SPIRIT COME FROM?

Y'all. This is a fun one. I never do this. I never whine. I never complain, ever. Haha. Just kidding. My husband would say I complain more than our children do. I think why I do that, specifically to him, is because it feels good to complain. When my day has been hard and I haven't complained all day and I've done the hard things and I come home, I just want to complain. Zac will say, "well baby what was so hard?' And I'll say, "ugh zoom meetings for 83 hours." And of course he says, "baby there's no way you did 83 hours of zoom meetings." Then I say, "well it was 3 hours but it was SO HARD." It just feels good to complain! It feels good to exaggerate and feel sorry for ourselves. Many of us have good reasons - zooming is not one of them. There are real things I could complain about, but those things aren't what I typically complain about. I complain about things that aren't that hard, but they're annoying. Underneath that is really the bigger problem - it does say in scripture in Phillippians 2:14, "do everything without grumbling or disputing so that you may be blameless and pure children without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation in which you shine as lights in the world." Something about our complaining and grumbling is showing the world not the light of God in us and the hope of God in us, but our crooked and depraved desires. God says the way we will shine in a crooked and perverse generation is by not complaining. I think this is so important. What is behind our complaining and grumbling?

It is that we feel like we deserve something we're not getting. It feels like we deserve a happy life, an easier life, a better life. Tim Keller says it this way, "the problem is that contemporary people will think life is about finding happiness. We decide what conditions will make us happy, then we work to bring those conditions about. To live for happiness means that you are trying to get something out of life. But when suffering comes, it takes the conditions of happiness away, and so suffering destroys all the reason to keep living. But to live for meaning means not that you try to get something out of life, but rather that life expects something from us. In other words, you have meaning only when there is something in life more important than your own personal freedom and happiness. Something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness." Guys, that is the definition of being a follower of Christ - no longer is our hope in this world. 

So why does it feel so hard to actually live this way? We aren't victims. Because there is a God who is writing a story. We aren't victims because there is a God who is rolling out his plans throughout history, and we're a part of those plans. If we find ourselves in a dark part of that story, that means he wants us in that dark part of the story, and there will be good written out of it. The Bible says, "all things work together for good of those who love God" (Romans 8:28). That is our promise. Even in the midst of a dark part of a chapter in this book that is our lives, that is the story of God, that is eternity, we are building a good story. He is building a good story, even in the midst of difficulty and a year like 2020. In the midst of losing jobs, diagnoses, death, everything. We have hope and we have a God that is with us in the midst of that dark part.

Q&A

I'm going to answer a few questions on this one because I know it's really loaded and some of you are like, "I just want to complain!"

How do I pull myself out of this victim mentality?

Let me just say this: things are not going our way. Some things are, but a lot of things aren't. I feel like every time I work through a fear or problems are being solved, there is a new problem that I never saw coming right behind it. This is life - solving problems. Hard things come and we endure it. Right before this podcast, I was on the phone with one of my dearest friends and we were crying together about something that is not going to be solved quickly. In fact, it may never be solved. It is something that has no answers and we have prayed and prayed and prayed and it hasn't changed and we don't know what to do. It may never change. It may never be made right on this earth. What do you do with that? Things are not going our way. It's real. Jesus says, "in this world you will have travel, but take heart, because I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). It will all be right one day - he will overcome it all! But it's not today. The power of God is in the midst of the trouble, but the trouble has yet to be solved completely like it will be one day. So how do we pull ourselves out of this? Let me tell you the greatest way I do this: yes, I read my Bible. Let me give you all the right answers first: the Bible. Without knowing the Bible I have no truth to tell myself. I play worship music - it always lifts my head. But the number one way that I change my perspective when I feel stuck and like I can't do it is to reach out to someone that is suffering more than me - love them, listen to them, be with them. Be there for them. Every single time I do that I come home and I hug my kids tighter and thank God for what I have. The greatest picture of this that changed everything for me was being friends with Sarah Henry. She was recovering from a massive stroke - her story is in several books - and she has walked through so much. She came back from not being able to walk, talk, or move and she is killing life right now. She drives, she takes care of herself and her kids, she is an incredible mom. Her words are still limited, but in those years when we were best friends and I saw her all the time, and she's in a wheelchair still, it was perspective-giving. It just was and it still is. That's part of the way our lives are supposed to work. I'm writing about living in a village and how we all need this and were built for this. That sized community is what we can handle. And part of that is you can carry each other's burdens. You walk through life together and never walk alone. Whether you're the one that is Sarah and needs somebody to be there for you or you are the one that needs to be around Sarahs so that you have perspective on life - we need each other. Sarah has been there for me too and carried me through seasons I didn't think I could live or breathe or prayer because it was so dark. That's the greatest way we overcome victimhood - love and serve each other. Be loved and served, too. Let other people help carry those burdens. You're going to hear me talk a lot about community in the coming year. Because what you're going to see is it keeps coming back to that - he built us to live that way. It is not good for any of us to be alone. When we're alone in our victimhood, our sadness, our difficulty, we don't have a lot of Grit because we are completely overwhelmed. 

Life doesn't feel very hard right now actually - am I doing something wrong?

Yay for you! No way! Enjoy it and have a ball! Yay! I do understand this because I used to be this way. Before I had really gone through a dark night of the soul and years of suffering, which we went through in mid-2015. Before that season, I felt guilty being happy. I don't feel guilty about that anymore. After 3 or 4 years of some of the darkest things happening around me and in our family and in my personal life + IF:Gathering starting and the pressure of all that. They were huge difficulties. I do not feel guilty after that. There are tastes of heaven on earth. There are moments where things are okay and you celebrate that and be there for other people, because that won't last. I'm not scared of that, because I've seen God provide in the midst of such darkness and difficulty, but I just expect it. I know there will come a time when we'll be back on the mat where we need other people to carry us. So when we're okay, we carry other people. It's a great joy and privilege to be doing that for several people in my life right now. 

What are some signs I'm living like a victim? 

If the narrative in your head is negative a lot of the time right now, you are probably struggling with victimhood. If you're negative about everybody, your circumstances, your marriage, your kids all the time in your head, I would say I have a great book for you. It's called Get Out Of Your Head! Because you do want to interrupt that cycle and abruptly change the way you're thinking. Living in that for too long, you'll lose perspective and forget that life isn't about comfort and happiness. Life isn't easy. Our kids will disappoint us, our marriages will disappoint us, our friends will disappoint us, our circumstances will disappoint us. We have to be those people that rise above those things and love anyway. If we stay stuck in the complaining and the negativity, it basically sends a message to the world that we need everything to be alright to be happy and that's just not Christianity. That's not following Christ. We don't need anything to be right on this earth because we have Christ. Living is Christ and dying is gain. It is a whole different perspective. If you don't know it and if you've never had a chance to hear about Jesus or this book, the Bible, it is a beautiful story. It's a surprising story. It tells us that we were stuck and he rescued us. Jesus on the cross died for our sin to set us free and we are set free forever. We are here for a little while in these broken bodies and in this broken place with broken people, to show people the love of God who saved us. Anything else is a distraction taking away from that mission. 

We have to fight this! I know some of you are fighting it and you're exhausted. Having just shed tears with somebody I love over circumstances that we can't control - I get it.