The Blessings in the Struggles

No one wants to struggle, but it’s during the struggles that we see so many blessings.

Last Friday night, my daughter, who is a freshman in college, sent me a text. It was a forward of an email she had received from her college. It announced that she had made the Dean’s List for her first semester. I don’t know when I have been so proud her.

Both of my children have had the misfortune of being of school age during the time of constant standardized testing. A well meaning group of legislators in the Federal Government, sometime in the late 1990’s decided that the best way to see if schools and teachers were doing their jobs, was to regularly test the students and let’s face it, standardized tests are easy to grade and track.

Unfortunately, neither of my kids have the gift for taking those types of tests, so school was a constant stress and struggle.

But, they are hard workers and both have had some awesome teachers along the way, that totally saw their potential and their work ethic, along with the flaws in the system. These teachers encouraged them and cheered them on along the way. They believed in them.

I don’t know if my daughter ever really believed me when I reassured her regularly, that once she got to college, nobody cared about standardized tests, that it was really about being a good writer, a good communicator and a hard worker.

So, when she sent me the text that she made the Dean’s List, I couldn’t wait to post it to Facebook and when those teachers, including one who taught her to play guitar, who always cheered her on, were the first people to comment with even more encouragement, tears of gratitude streamed down my face.

Her first semester was very stressful and when some of the prayer warriors that I had asked to pray for her, commented their congratulations, I had to grab a tissue.

We always want what’s best for our kids and it’s never easy to see them struggle. We tend to pray for smooth paths for ourselves and for those we love. We often wonder why other people seem to have to have such an easy time with everything they do, from standardized tests, to health issues, to relationship issues, to financial issues.

Yet, when we struggle, we get to see all of the angels that God sends our way. We get to see Him working and intervening. And when we look back, we can see that He rained down blessings all along the way, even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

The struggles build our faith. The struggles build our children’s faith. The struggles allow others to bless us and in the end, we are so much stronger for it.

Some Facebook comments reminded me. Perhaps you needed reminding too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂