No, I'm not overly depressed. And no, in this instance I am not overly tired either. I am, however, very sore. My feet are sore, my back is sore, my knees are sore, my head is sore. It feels like every muscle in my body has been put through an exercise routine that would shame the Navy SEALS.
You see, today I went on a bike ride to the pier at Ocean Beach with a friend of mine so we could go fishing. It was a beautiful day, and we were really excited to get off of campus for a little while and relax. But it was a terrible day for fishing. There was absolutely nothing to catch off a pier that is suspended over a natural reef, a place where fish should be in the thousands; "multitudinous," you could say.
As we left I felt like I had wasted another afternoon trying in vain to catch anything at all, let alone something we could bring back and eat. But I knew the ride back would be fun, because it always is, and I had finally realized there was an easier way to get back to Point Loma than what I was used to. So looking forward to an easy ride and a swift return home so we could get some food, we set off at a relatively fast pace. Fast that is, until the wind started blowing towards us. I had never expected it to hinder us, but half way through the ride back I felt like I had ridden four times the usual distance, all uphill. The second half was then, for lack of a better word, torture, and even now, four hours later, I am still very much aware of how strenuous it was. But we made it back safely, and that was good enough for me.
So why am I telling this story? Well, as we were eating in the cafeteria, a thought came to me. It said, "I wonder if there is some kind of parable to be found in this situation?" Yes there is, actually, and it's fairly obvious if you are thinking right. That story, I have concluded, is a good parable about life. Let me explain.
There are many facts of life that people recognize, but the one most undeniable fact of life is that no matter who you are, you will face hardships of some kind. For some those hardships are physical: they are poor or suffer from a chronic illness or some other difficult situation. For others, the hardships are emotional: they feel oppressed or rejected by the world.
But everyone will feel spiritual hardship at one point or another. Even people completely non-religious will admit that they have, at some point in their lives, felt a spiritual emptiness or confusion. Or maybe they won't admit to that, but they have still felt it. When someone loses a family member, or gets an "insufficient funds" response from the ATM for the fifth time, or feels like nothing is going right in their life, they feel like they've fallen into this eternal darkness from which there is not escape.
Everyone has a goal they try to reach. For me the goal was to get back to my dorm. For a single mom trying to feed three children and a dog, her goal is to get food on the table on a daily basis. But obtaining our goals is never as easy as it sounds. God places obstacles in our paths, very much intended to hinder our progress, not because He thinks it's funny or because He's just mean-spirited. God gives us hardships to test our faith in Him.
Too many people don't get that. They think that God is ignoring them by allowing bad things to happen, but that is just not the case. God knows that we can can overcome the struggles and the disappointments, and that we'll be stronger for it. While I was riding all I could think about was why that ride was so hard and why it couldn't be just a little easier for me to get back. But I made it through to the end goal, and I know tomorrow I'll be stronger because that ride was so difficult.
So I guess to conclude my ramblings, no matter what happens in your life, whether it is your best moment or your very worst, know that if you can just push through and trust that God knows what He is doing, you will achieve more than you ever thought possible, and though you might be sore and tired from the struggle, you will be stronger for it. And that is the best goal we can hope to obtain.
