Doing Hard Things

"These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things." - Glennon Doyle

I woke up early last Saturday and decided to do something I knew would be hard - the skyline traverse here in Boulder. It's a doozy of an undertaking (for me at least) to hike/run/crawl from summit to summit from Sanitas to Flagstaff to Green Mountain to Bear Peak and finishing up atop South Boulder Peak all in one massive morning! And I have to tell you...I thought it was really freaking hard. AND it was sooooo worth it.

We don't climb mountains because it's easy. We climb mountains because there is beauty in the challenge - courage built with each new step on quavering legs, integrity learned with every ragged breath, humility instilled with each false summit, and self-worth found in each glance back at just how far we have come...we don't climb mountains because it's easy. We climb mountains because we never know how strong we are until we are tested - we never know what we are capable of unless we try.

We can do hard things AND it can be fun, beneficial, and beautiful to do hard things. I can't help but think that life would be pretty darned boring if everything always came on a silver platter. What would there be to learn and how would we ever grow?

So today I'm grateful for the hard things in my life because goodness knows they are the things that contribute exponentially to the expansion of my soul. Life will sometimes be hard, but we can do hard things.