I wonder how many times in a day we say that four-letter word: hard?

It’s hard to get out of bed, hard to get the children to the schoolwork on time, hard to think of what to have for dinner, hard to wait for spring…or anything for which we must wait for that matter.

There are seasons where everything seems hard. Finances are strained, relationships are strained, innumerable circumstances seem to be conspiring to strain us to the breaking point. Within all these hard things, and possibly even when things are easy for the moment, we are also parenting and that is a hard job. Children are a blessing but raising them to be a blessing is challenging. 

To be honest, trying to help you with all this hard work is often hard for me. One reason is that I often have to say hard things. I want to be so careful not to wound, but as Mason herself admitted, the knife must sometimes cut in order to heal. I know we mothers love our children exceedingly abundantly beyond description, far more than anyone else who knows them does. Understanding this, I often ask moms to do the “hard” thing with their child by appealing to their inordinate mother love and compassion. It is obvious that anyone who loves a child does not hesitate to prevent them from death or serious injury, no matter how roughly we may have to act in order to do so in a crisis. I know that we all want desperately for our children to be unshaken in their confidence that we love them. What I think we do forget, or misunderstand, is that sometimes we must be hard on our children so that they will know that that love is immovable.

Disciplining children, making them attempt things that are hard, charging them to do what they think they cannot, urging them to do the “hard” task before them is hard on us. In each case, gentleness is mandatory, encouragement is essential, compassion is always called for. I never recommend abandoning these attitudes toward our children, no matter how hard is the thing we must help our children to do. Because we know reading and learning math will mean no end of good for them in the future they do not yet know, we move them into what feels very, very hard for them in the moment.

But just as we prepare those spring seedlings we have so carefully nurtured to growing those tender leaves, plants do have to be hardened in order to withstand the reality of living outdoors in that garden. We do so in gradual steps. When it comes to our children, we cannot postpone the hard habits and skills and lessons they must do. Like the tender seedlings, we introduce them to reality gradually, increasing the exposure. If we want their growth and learning and character to develop, however, we cannot neglect making our children face hard things. Their life, like ours, will be full of hard things. We want them to succeed in all those life lessons too. It reminds us of Paul’s words, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character…” For character to strengthen, enduring hardness is unavoidable.

It takes courage on our part as parents, especially when others seem to stand in judgment of our decisions in handling what we know is best for our own children. Most of us are far too sensitive to the criticism of our peers and superiors, especially when it comes to raising our children. The children, however, have been given to us by God. It is He whom we must please, and doing right by our children, even requiring them to do tough things, is our responsibility and to shirk it is not doing our duty to God.

The children, of course, resist. Tears and tantrums and pouting and balking often confront us when we must impose any hard condition on them. These behaviors do not allow us off the hook either. We can teach them to do what is hard with kindness and sympathy, but we cannot avoid teaching them to face and endure difficulties.

These thoughts have been percolating recently as I came to the end of leading a study in the book of Hebrews. Faith is putting all our trust in the God who holds the universe together, and that always involves action, proving our trust by doing what we must. In Hebrews 12:1-2, there is the metaphor of running a race. Nothing about a serious race is easy. The author expands on this encouragement to endurance by reminding us that as children of God we are under his discipline. His hard lessons are our path to holiness. The pressures and pain we endure are not random, but part of his parenting us, toughening us to endure, building character, perfecting our souls. No parent who loves his child fails to discipline him, and God is a perfect parent—loving, compassionate, faithful, patient, yes, but persistently persevering in teaching us to persevere. His goal is that we succeed in running the course he has set before us. In Hebrews, we are reminded that Christ has run the race first. He went ahead of us in suffering and enduring.

As we approach Lent and our thoughts turn to Jesus finishing his saving work, we reflect on how well he ran the race set before him. He endured to the end, endured rejection, affliction, and death. Hebrews says he did so “for the joy set before Him.” That joy is in making a way for our salvation in order to bring us to God. This includes helping us to run the race well every day to the end. When all around us seems hard and unbearable, we, like our own children, can endure whatever hard things we must because of being surrounded by an unshakable love, the love that is present even in our hardest trials, the love that did the hardest thing: giving His own beloved Son to bring us life. That hard was all good and for our good. 

I pray each of you has a joyous celebration of this wondrous gift of life this Easter. Thanks be to God for His Son who went through the hardest hard for our salvation. Hardness is not bad. The hard brings about much goodness.