It seems like most recently I’ve had a wave of opportunities piled onto my plate. A warm and savory serving of uncomfortable opportunities.

I’m unsure if this is a sign of how fabulous I will be in the next ten years, love from a God who knows I am in need of His continuous mercy or both.

Both.

I like the idea of both.

Perhaps you know what I mean.

The email you had thoughtfully laid out, fuming with greatness, went to the wrong co-worker. With good intentions, you gave untimely advice on an honest whim that dug deep into a good friend’s heart who really just needed prayer and not your words of ignorant wisdom. Damage control from too many glasses of wine topped with a splash of your favorite mixed drink — at your husband’s work party.

Maybe this is the kind of discomfort you dream of. Instead, you are running from the pain and heartache of an exhausted marriage, an inescapable long term illness, resentfully raising your children single handed for a number of reasons or the agonizing burden of traumas piled on top of too many years of trying to escape the broken hearts that comes with age and experiences.

Some of this discomfort is a combination of our own doing and a mixture of, well simply co-existing with other humans. And then there is the discomfort we wouldn’t pray on our worst enemy and we can’t seem to figure out why it’s landed on us.

I think this goes without being said but uncomfortable places range in degrees of AWFUL! Awful can be humiliating, shameful, full of guilt and regret. Or it can be annihilating and filled with trauma and paralysis.

Let me ask you this.

When you find yourself bearing this type of weight, do you resist the internal pressure it creates and instead shift it off your plate by serving up a cold side dish of blame? Blaming life, others or yourself. If you don’t wish to blame, do you resist simply sitting in this season of life that is saturated in treasures wrapped in the beauty of uncomfortable? 

My sweet friend, it has taken all of my 39 years and excruciating inescapable dilemmas for me to tell you this:

It is in these very hard places that heroes emerge, books are written and brave tales are told for generations. 

[bctt tweet=”It is in these very hard places that heroes emerge, books are written and brave tales are told for generations. ” username=”cassierajewich”]

Uncomfortable places are hard places. To sit in them can drain you of all emotions that time and energy could never buy.

But here’s the thing…

I never want you or me to succumb to such a comfortable resistance to change that we neglect the very purpose of which this life has called us.

And that my friend, is to be transformed into the likeness of something amazingly beautiful. To grow beyond what we could ever imagine.

………….

Now, how to do this…that is the magic of it all! Stay tuned for part two as I embark on the topic of how to not only lean into those hard places but the growth that comes from such a trust.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Question: A lot of people are afraid of feeling the pain of discomfort. The pain of healing. What do you think? Is the confrontation of those tough places rewarding enough? Have you experienced this?

’till next time,

Cassie