Struggling

Yesterday morning I did a Bible walk with some folks from Mountview Uniting Church. One of the things they asked me was to tell them the story of someone I know from the street who’s had their life transformed. I said that I know a lot of people who’ve been able to make changes in their lives, but that change often takes a long time. I have friends who’ve quite heroin, and then ended up on it again, and then quit again for a while before they go back to using once again. (For most people it takes a number of attempts to quit before they can sustain themselves without heroin.) A number of people have been around for years and years, and are still struggling with the same problems.

That could be seen as disappointing. But I don’t know that it’s actually much different to any of the rest of us. I have a feeling that most of us struggle with the pretty much the same problems from our childhood and adolescent stages until the day we die. It’s just that some of us struggle with problems that are highly disapproved of and difficult to hide (such as homelessness or illicit drug dependency), whereas others struggle with things that aren’t considered as important – such as working too much or neglecting our families.

So I think it’s okay that people never stop struggling. We need to keep struggling. And we need to struggle together.

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