The great secret of life is to learn how to survive struggle without succumbing to it; how to bear struggle without being defeated by it; how to come out of deep struggle better than when we went into it in the first place.
Struggle leads us to self knowledge . . . it tests all the faith and goodness of God we ever professed we had . . . builds forebearance . . . purity of heart . . . brings total metamorphosis of soul. If we are willing to persevere through the depth of struggle we can emerge transformed.
Enduring struggle is the price to be paid for becoming everything we are meant to be in this world. It calls more out of you than you can ever imagine was there. The kind of struggle that shocks us into new beginnings is the kind of struggle that gives us new life.
It forces us down uneven paths. It leads us stumbling through the rules and recesses of the dark sides of the soul; angry, fearful, resistent and unbelieving but it also prods us from task to task in life until in the end we find ourselves full stature and full of grace. We grow because we struggle.
Joan Chittister
http://monasteriesoftheheart.org/
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