When life begins to take me to school I feel like staying home sick.

Especially when I know I’m repeating a course that I’ve failed before.

Meeting the steep uphill parts of life gets frustrating and makes more than just my calves hurt.

What changes if I began to think VERY DIFFERENTLY about the uphill portions?
If I turned the tables on the difficulty and the frustration and the UP-HILLNESS of it and said, “there has to be a better way, a way up and over, and finally through”.

I don’t have to be like the Donner Party trapped for months on end by circumstances.

Growing weaker every day. More discouraged. A perpetual prisoner.
NO I DON”T.
If I can’t get out of it, then I’m determined to go ahead through it.

Have you noticed that as God’s children we are not immune to difficulties and problems?
But God knows we need the UP-HILLNESS sometimes.
He’s included it in the divine road map He’s made for each of us.
But He’s not toying with us.
He’s training us.

The photo/saying I made for this post looks like a road, but it’s really a wall.
I took a close up of it looking up the wall to capture the moss and grasses clinging tenaciously to the old stones.

Walls present two options.

~ A barrier that keeps us from making any forward progress.

~ A ladder to a higher place, and possibly a wider space.

Where do we get the strength to scale the wall, to use it as a ladder and by scaling it end up on a higher level?
Sarah Young suggests we start with gratitude.
To thank God for the tutor and the lesson.

And the companionship of a personal God who has promised to be there with us as we gather to ourselves all the Jesus-likeness we can from the experience.

But now, God’s Message,
the God who made you in the first place, Jacob,
the One who got you started, Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you.
I’ve called your name. You’re mine.
When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.
When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place,
it won’t be a dead end—
Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Savior.
I paid a huge price for you:
all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!
That’s how much you mean to me!
That’s how much I love you!
I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,
trade the creation just for you.
Isaiah 43:1-4
The Message

. . .in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Romans 8:37