Life's a Challenge

There are a lot of things in life that are hard.  They change as you change or as your life changes.  What may be hard one day may seem like small stuff later in life.  Maybe you are waiting to hear if you’ve been accepted into the McNair Scholars Program, maybe you are trying to run your first mile, your car is on the fritz, a friend is giving you grief, or you are feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities you have at this moment.  There will be countless things in our lifetime that will challenge us.  And that’s a good thing!  But, when you are the one struggling to overcome that challenge, it is hard to reconcile the fact that these challenges help you grow, make you stronger, and help you face the next challenge.  

Many of our scholars have been waiting for responses from grad schools where they have applied.  The fate of their future rests in someone else’s hands.  The decisions that others are making in regards to their future is monumental.  AHHHHH!!!  How stressful!  Which grad schools are going to present them with an offer?  Which offer will they accept?  What if they don’t receive any offers?  Where are they going to be moving?  How much of a stipend will they be getting?  Will they be able to afford their living expenses without taking on a part-time job?  What if the offer they receive doesn’t align with the path they had mapped out for their future?  The wait and not knowing is torture!!

Right now, I can totally empathize with those scholars waiting for their grad school offers.  We are in the process of buying a new home and moving.  In my ideal world, everything would have happened in a week.  In this ideal world of mine, I can sell my house, find a new one, get all the loan documentation taken care of, close on both homes, pack, move and be settled into the new home all within a week.  Yep, you read that correctly!  All of that would have taken place within a week.  But of course that isn’t the way it really happens…this is the real world.  

I know that I need to be patient and things will work themselves out as they should.  I realize that everything happens for a reason.  In my head, I tell myself the same things that I say to the scholars in hopes to reassure and calm their nerves while they wait for their offers to come.  These same words apply to my own situation.  But when the shoe is on the other foot, it is hard to let it go and let life happen.  It is hard to reconcile the fact that these challenges help me grow, make me stronger, and help me face the next challenge.  Life is hard, but that’s a good thing.  Because it means I’m living!