10 minutes after leaving for his morning run at the crack of dawn, my husband Kenya returned home yesterday drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. I knew he had broken his pattern—he never comes back that quickly. “What’s the matter babe?” I asked as he stood bent over with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath.
“My ankle,” he huffed. “I twisted my ankle while I was running.”
I knew he had some pretty important meetings scheduled for the day, and from the looks of things, he would need to reschedule them all. “Are you okay? Are you gonna be able to walk on it?” I inquired worriedly.
“Yeah, I think so. I’ll be alright. I was running along my normal path and there was a deep groove underneath a patch of grass,” he explained while wiping away sweat. “That threw me off balance and I hurt my ankle.”
I felt so sorry for him as he hobbled around wincing and grimacing. But, even though Kenya couldn’t finish his run, he kept his other commitments anyway. So, later on, after completing all his tasks for the day, Kenya’s ankle was a tad swollen and sore, but he said the pain was manageable.
He’ll be fine after a few days… and a few cold soaks. Kenya’s a trooper. And in our daily lives, we have to be troopers too. Unexpected challenges will inevitably arise in our lives from time to time to throw us off balance. But only we can choose our response. Either we deal with the opposition and press through anyway, or we give up and succumb to the difficult challenges we’re facing.
Granted, when we hit an unforseen rough patch, like Kenya, we may be forced to slow down. But we don’t have to stop. We can keep going with the understanding that “life happens” to all of us. The Bible puts it this way. “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV). Setbacks are unavoidable.
Nevertheless, just because we face mountains, obstacles, hardships, and hurdles, we don’t have to shut down and retreat. There’s no way we can be victorious if we do that. You see, at the end of the day, only the prayerful, strong, and determined survive life’s rough spots.
You may be left limping, but whatever you do, don’t quit. Don’t give up. Forge ahead. Prees through anyway. Take what Proverbs 24:10 says as a reminder of the importance of persevering until the end: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.”
When you keep pushing through great adversity, you develop great strength—which is the prerequisite to the possession of your promised future and destiny.
Today’s Prayer: Lord, there are times when I face unexpected hardship and honestly, I’m tempted to give up. During these times, I ask that You please give me strength to endure. Help me to stand through the opposition knowing that, as Your word says, in due season I will reap if I don’t faint. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
