Everyone’s Hard is Different
Dianne DeKoning has served in a variety of ministry roles for over 25 years. Middle school students have her heart while she seeks to help people be the best version of who God created them to be. She currently serves as the chaplain of Hope House, a teen shelter outside of Minneapolis, and as WyldLife Lead in Eden Prairie, MN. She also spends time mentoring college students and coaching youth pastor, all while highly caffeinated and juggling family life with her husband and three school age children. Dianne dreams of free time for herself yet believes time with people is the best gift ever.
Celebrating is so fun. Yet we don’t have to look too far past your morning cup of coffee to know, see, hear or even experience for yourself that our days are hard. There are hard days or hard mornings, hardship shared on the other end of the phone, hard circumstances to navigate, hard events to hear about, hard interactions to process.
We’ve all had them or know people who have. Today, my daughter had a sock issue. You might relate. The annoying sock that doesn’t feel just right in your shoe so you tug and pull and position 100x before it feels just right. With her almost in tears, this is her 6 year old version of super hard. My hardship might not be my sock today, but for this little girl, it was THE hardship of the day. Maybe you have a ‘sock issue’ in your life right now.
Maybe it’s much, much more challenging or serious or life-impacting. We aren’t promised a smooth ride when we hop aboard the journey with Jesus. There are plenty of examples in scripture of how following Jesus cost something, from leaving familiar home life, to even believers giving of their own lives. Jesus makes the ride worth it, not because it’s smooth, but because he rides with us. What a gift to have a forever companion with us, at every moment, to journey through it with us, both the celebrations and the hardship.
If we all experience hardship, but each person is uniquely made, then everyone’s hard is different. This compliments our belief that everyone is gifted by the Holy Spirit in a unique way, each person has their own strengths, skills, talents and passions unique to them. How encouraging! Yet when it comes to hardship, we can find ourselves wading into a pool of minimizing another person’s hardship. We find ourselves in a pool of comparison, wondering why it's so hard for them and easy for you. Or we find ourselves with a slight bit of arrogance thankful that your own hardship isn’t hers. We find ourselves forgetting that our uniqueness is not only cause for beautiful celebration but that our hardships are also each unique. So what’s hard for me, is easy for you. Your story of hardship isn’t my story of hardship, but we both carry a story. Everyone’s hard is different.
When we agree that everyone’s hard is different, compassion grows in us. Godly compassion springs up. Our eyes see others hardship as hard, not a place to cast judgement or a problem to solve for them. Seeing people as Jesus sees them is our starting place, instead of casting off their cares. Compassion is what God gave us when we lean in, so that others we love don’t feel so alone. We become the hands and feet of Jesus to another. When a hardship is shared, you get to respond out of care and compassion. Even if their hardship isn’t your hardship. My socks fit fine, it’s not my hard.
But to my 6 year old, that was the hardest thing at that moment, and when I decided to enter into her hard, my judgement is suspended and my compassion starts to overflow. Your hardship might not be their hardship, but that doesn’t mean it’s less hard. It means we have been given an opportunity to agree that everyone’s hard is different and offer the gift of compassion.
I had several options on how to respond to the sock issue this morning. Even if my insides wanted to say “it’s not a big deal” or “get over it” or offer casually dismissive words, I chose to start with “oh, that sounds uncomfortable, let’s see if we can work on it.” I met my daughter in her hardship, didn’t cast it off as no big deal just because I don’t have the shared hardship and we worked on it, together. Because everyone’s hard is different and I want to be a person who meets others in their hardship with compassion, like Jesus would, remembering that everyone will be handed hard days, hard mornings, hard news to hear or more. Let’s be people who share more compassion, it makes the celebrations much sweeter.
