“To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping.”

-Chinese Proverb

Last week I attended a meeting with a small group of like-minded mothers, trying our best to raise our children in the way we believe is best, despite our current cultural trends otherwise.  One of the women at the meeting raised her hand and said she and her husband often talk about the difficultly they have raising their family in this counter-cultural way and that sometimes it just feels like they are swimming upstream.  She said that her husband constantly reassures her that their journey is only making them stronger.

But aren’t there times when we all would rather do just that?  Just go with the flow and stop swimming.  Choose the life of ease and be done with all the strength and effort it takes to constantly go against the grain.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to go to the grocery store and buy that can of pasta sauce instead of standing in front of an 18 quart pot of boiling liquid on a ninety-degree August day?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just sit in the drive through line, while texting friends, and then order a burger and fries?  Wouldn’t it be easier to catch up on the celebrity gossip and carry on a light-hearted conversation with a group of moms at the mall?

This weekend there were times when I felt this pull to just sink into the couch cushions, and be swept away by what the majority of our culture views as normal. I felt a tug to be drawn away into the abyss of pop-culture, of who is dating whom and who is wearing what.   I thought about how much easier it would be to be thinking about what someone had just posted on Facebook, instead of where we should purchase our eggs and chicken from this year because the farmer we formally purchased these goods from is no longer raising chickens.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to take the blue pill and flush that red one right down the toilet?

But it was when I tucked my beautiful girls in bed last night and looked at their innocent faces, those faces that rely on me for everything, that I began to feel more like myself again.  They are my reasons, two very important reasons, I get up each and every morning and choose to go about life the way that I do.  They are my reasons for continuing that forward breaststroke in the stream that constantly seems to be giving its last-ditch effort to thrust me back in the other direction.  They are my reasons, that no matter how tired, worn out, and run through the ringer I feel, I cannot give up.

I hope each of you is given a renewed sense of hope and faith on this Monday morning to do what you believe is right in your life, despite what our culture tells us is normal.  Have a wonderful week!