Perseverance

Last summer we added an apartment above our garage for a family member. It was quite a major project. We had electric panels redone, plumbing configured, and everything else that goes with new construction..

To configure the plumbing for the apartment, the ground had to be dug down all the way to the existing plumbing from the city main and connect it to the apartment. In that process several ginormous rocks like the one in the picture were dug up. They were placed on the ground until we could figure out what to do with them. I've joked about it, but I'm 90% serious when I say this....you can't dig anywhere on our property without runninng into a big rock. No exaggeration.

So for the past year, little by little, I've been trying to bust up these rocks to make them manageable to move. It was exhausting. I have a three pound sledge hammer that will take care of most anything I need to be doing with such a tool, but it didn't seem to be making a dent in these rocks.

After some research, I found out that if you make a line across the rock and keep hitting along with that line with a hammer, the rock will eventually break. Ah! New information! So I set out to accomplish this feat. Still, this one rock would not crack. I was about to give up but didn't want to be bested by a rock, so every few days, I would go and hammer along the line on that rock until I couldn't anymore. After about a month of this....that rock finally broke. That wasn't the end of the story....the two sections were still too big to move so I had to repeat the process until the pieces were manageable for me to move.

So here we are, a year later and finally all the pieces of that rock have been taken care of. So what's my point in this story?

Sometimes we have to persevere in things that seem impossible, when it seems like there is no movement at all inspite of our best efforts. It's easy to get discouraged and want to give up. So what does that look like?

My current struggle is menopause and all the lovely new challenges that brings. I gained weight that I haven't been able to lose regardless of what I eat or don't, or how much I exercise. Fun. Not really!

I won't lie, there are times it just seems hard and I want to quit and just not care but I think of what it took for me to break that rock....consistency over time. In application that looks like...eating what I know to eat, getting enough protein, and going to the gym and doing what I know to do...lifting weights and doing some cardio. Eventually, my body will respond to all the effort I'm putting in and I will be healthy and strong in my later years.

I won't do it perfectly. Some weeks I miss more days at the gym than I'm there, some weeks I am there every day. I'm learning to listen to what my body is telling me. The goal is not perfection. It's consistency...whatever that looks like for me.

That's my encouragement for you. In the areas where you're tired and don't think you can keep going, realize that you can. Find a goal...something that will carry you through in the hard times. Then you do the next thing and then the next, and then the next. You will stumble and that's okay. You will have down days and that's okay. You'll get tired and be unmotivated and that's okay. If you keep going though, one foot in front of the other, one day you will look back and realize that it was all worth it and you'll be glad you didn't give up. And I will too!