Choose Your Hard

Each and every time I sit down to type something, I envision a scene from the movies. The writer is some brilliant actress with a bit of a perfectionistic streak, and they type then delete on repeat before composing some elaborate, thorough, yet touching piece of sentimental written artwork. Then comes the scratching of a record, abruptly halting the image. In reality, it's just me sitting here, yielding a keyboard in lieu of a pen, and a jumbled meshing of thoughts and ideas which, at times, elicit a reaction or two, but less often these days.

Despite all the doubt of the exposure even being worth it, I forge on with making an attempt at conveying a speck of what's on my mind. "Choose your hard." Those words ring steadily and without fail, over and over. Grief has been so up close and personal as of late. I am not even referring to my own personal process, but the people around me wading in or even worse, plunging into the deep end where I am already.

Our shared reality no matter who you are, is that our days are, in fact, numbered and time steals. I find myself considering if everything I do is my last, repeatedly on an average day. It is this new normal that has also got me grasping the aforementioned phrase, "Choose Your Hard." Every choice impacts the next one. The majority of the time, we don't get to redo anything.

I get dressed and am stuck with how warm, soft, or uncomfortable those clothes are for the entire day. I pack a healthy lunch and don't feel like I want to eat those things at noon. I grab a frozen meal because putting together items feels too much like work, and I am likewise stuck with no other options. Seemingly every day, not important decisions become a big deal. Fight with your spouse or your kids, and then spend all day without the opportunity to do much to avail of that regret.

I could go on, but if you really took a moment, I bet you can see how it isn't just the big decisions that have an overall impact on each day, week, and month. Purchase dinner on the way home because you don't feel like cooking only a few times, and your budget will bite you (can you tell I don't like to cook, so my tough decisions often revolve around food?). Then we do have the big decisions in which changing the course they took us is likewise life-altering. These would be from your spouse, when and how many kids to have, a house to buy, where to live, a job to take, and so on.

Choose a spouse mostly because you want a family and kids more than you love the person, well, you chose to postpone your hard till later in life. Having kids right away, you chose your hard because you weren't grown enough, financially ready enough. Wait to have kids till you have enough money or your career is in a "good" place, and you may find yourself struggling to have kids or regretting the age and physical ability you are when they finally leave home for their own independence. Marrying a person who doesn't fully share the same beliefs and values, assuming that love will overcome all, that also is a choose your hard for a later moment.

Escaping the daily hard with social media, food, streaming, alcohol, or a million other things may find you looking back at the time you let go because life just is hard. That too is a choose your hard later instead of today.

I am 46 years old with just one child still under 18. My next oldest living child will be 21 very soon. There are many spaces where it sure feels like I chose my hard for later instead of initially holding fast to discipline now equals rewards later. Heck, truth be told, I feel like there are only a few spots I chose the hard early and the reward later, except maybe being a mom young.

Every day, I get up and know that my chosen hard moments are passing by like the scenery through a car window while speeding down the highway. So then I ask myself, how often can you recognize that and stay stuck? For years, I've made these very same remarks about my life. Have any of you? Are there places where you remain planted with deep roots wrapping your own legs and not nestled in the ground? Boy, do I have a massive list of those things in which I desperately want to want to change? Yes, you read that right, want to want. I am a stubborn, determined person. Isn't that an oxymoron too?! Choose my hard.

So, dear friends, I write this in the hopes that calling myself out puts me one step closer to choosing my hard-for-now moments ahead. Or maybe it's just so someone else can read it all and recognize this too is a rite of passage for growing up, no matter what age you actually are. Man, I sure pray I can get a few pieces headed in a different direction before I turn 50 and have no kids needing me to "raise" them. Let this be my declaration for just that. Choose Your Hard...later :) Just kidding, maybe.

The real truth is found in Romans 8:13-14 that sits squarely in my bathroom mirror. This reminds me that my flesh musy constantly die in order for me to live. It serves as a reminder to be eventually even be a catalyst of sorts for the hard things I surely will do now and not save for later any longer. May that be the anthem we each live our life by!