Ice Road Truckers (or IRT as I call it) is a reality show about brave, psychopathic truck drivers that haul giant chunks of industrial machinery to a diamond mine over frozen lake roads, racing against the clock and warmer weather. It’s a nightmare, an epic and seemingly pointless struggle. People die. It seems wrong, frankly, like nothing that difficult could be worth it.
Watching this show last year I recognized a profound hole in my swiss-cheese psyche. I don’t want to struggle. Not because I’m afraid of it, or lazy, but because in my heart I imagine something must be wrong if a task or goal requires too much struggle. I think it must be a bad decision, or it must not be God’s will, or I didn’t plan it right because clearly when things are “right” they just flow and come relatively easy.
Baloney.
Where did I get such a notion? I think of myself as very self-aware, a decent reader of people and a keen analyst of the world around me. If that’s the case how did I miss the glaring, trumpet-blast in the face reality that LIFE IS A STRUGGLE. Life IS struggle, period. From day one we struggle to get out into the oxygen and we fight and fight and fight. I’m slapping my existential forehead here, friends.
This idea is a fire burning through my plans for the future, and burning right back into my past failures and “give up” moments. I see things I gave up on, things I felt God led me to do, and I’m ashamed how quickly I put them aside when the struggle came. Realizing challenge and resistance is the norm, not the variation, gives me new strength. It won’t come easy, ever, I say to myself in the mirror. It’s a struggle, GET OVER IT.
I write, make 
Good one sweetheart! I don’t really think about taking the hard road very often, as you well know. I’ve seen the benefits in struggle in people’s lives though for sure. That picture is scaaarry!