Accepting Life Both Easy and Hard

Life is characteristically either easy or hard, and many of us wander between these poles from one day to the next. Balance can be elusive. When things are easy pride becomes us, but when things turn hard it is self-pity we run to. Both of these destinations are ruts.

There are cycles of easy and cycles of hard,

Directions of pride and pity to guard,

Straddling the knife’s edge and not to be cut,

Is living life so as to avoid many a rut.

When we take life in a bipolar fashion, swinging from easy to hard and back again, we quickly recognise how tantalising temptations are in just living life within the situations we are placed. But it goes better for us when we dare to approach balance.

There are tantalising temptations with which to scare,

These are opportunities with which to dare,

For the prize on offer stands there to be claimed,

As proof of the direction in which we aimed.

Our aim is balance.

Oh, To Achieve Balance!

This is something that the balanced take for granted. The wise take their balance in their stride. But a bipolar spirituality is something many of us are entangled with. Oh to achieve balance. What we would do for it!

But to be fair, we organise ourselves a better perception of life and reality when we take life as it comes.

There are cycles of times that are easy, as much as there are cycles that are hard. Never can we assume that the next moment will be one or the other. The uncertainty of life creates mysteries around the incoming situation, and therefore how we will handle it.

Amongst a bitter degree of uncertainty we are cast forth into the world.

God mandates life this way, such that we must deal with what comes, and as peaceably as we can. But dealing with polar disparities of easy and hard is not an especially impossible task. God’s grace is sufficient. And we remember that the wisdom in balance is achievable most of the time, so long as we don’t expect perfection of ourselves. We will need to lower our expectations.

Never will we be perfectly balanced, just like never will we completely understand life in the midst of all its challenges, beauties, uncertainties, glories, or disappointments.

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Accepting that life is both easy and hard—and it’s all between—requires a balanced resilience in comprehending perfection of understanding is unattainable.

Understanding that life is often a confusing mystery beyond us helps us to struggle onward; to struggle well. No matter what comes—whether it’s easy or hard—we have a way to balance through the grace in God.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.