Monday, the members of our house plus two kid-sized house guests did hard things for lunch – we each had a food on our plate that we didn’t like. Three of us made our food taste good. One was too tired to eat and finally took a much needed nap. The other didn’t like how he seasoned his food and was mad that he had to eat a food he didn’t like and threw a fit that landed him eating his lunch cold later that evening. Doing hard things for lunch was the first step in my attempt to train myself and my family to do hard things.

What do I mean by hard things? Hard things are tasks, projects, goals and actions that we don’t want to do because they seem too difficult to do. They are things that require a lot of effort, may seem unpleasant, we may fail at or may have to do again.

My observation of myself, my generation and the generations younger than me is that we are scared to try things we may fail at. As I get older and observe more, it seems that life, especially the life of a Christian, is all about doing hard things and doing things we don’t want to do. I know that I don’t like to put forth effort to potentially fail. But it’s in the failure that we learn.

To help retrain my way of thinking and to train my children,  I am implementing new language – at our house, we do hard things. Right now, I will be happy if we do one hard thing a week. Gradually, we will work toward doing something hard every day.

The members of our house…
•Do hard things.