I have been in blog panic mode for the past 24 hours. WordPress.org is playing hard to get with me, and is winning. Unable to upload photos, and even type (I am posting this blog via email instead of my site), I feel helpless. While this is not by any means a tragedy, or that big of an issue, it has completely disrupted my day, and the challenge of understanding why my site has crashed is more than frustrating.
After tinkering with my site for the past 10 hours, I have been thinking a lot about the value of challenges in our lives, however annoying and trivial they may seem sometimes. We have trained ourselves to be open to big challenges, like life-changes, moves, job-switches and new diets, but often I find that we forget about the growth that comes with little challenges.
“Challenges [whatever the size or type] make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch – what make you go beyond norm.” – unknown
I love this quotation for how the truth of it really sinks deep into the soul. Perhaps my instrument stretching challenge today is found in building my patience and in learning my need to reach out to others more for help (rather than stubbornly make no progress for hours trying to figure it out on my own). In what ways are you currently being stretched and are you allowing yourself to stretch and be re-molded through those challenges, or are you trying to be a rubber band that snaps back to your original state of being?
While I admire rubber bands’ ability to return close to their natural state, I would rather allow my band to be re-shaped into something new rather than stretched to the breaking point. If we fail to see life’s little challenges as growth opportunities, we too will snap before we know it.