Looking at the challenges life serves up as a master class in presencing ourselves.
It’s getting real out there…. war, politics, and gas prices for heaven’s sake – Yikes.
When we turn on the news there’s a lot coming at us. And then, on top of that, life has a way of bringing things closer to home. Situations we didn’t choose. Things we wouldn’t have signed up for.
And in those moments, it’s natural to feel the heaviness of day-to-day life.
But friends in these moments our spiritual beliefs aren’t just feel-good see-you-Sunday connections anymore—they are necessary.
Because it’s one thing to talk about principle when life is going well. It’s another thing entirely when you’re in the middle of something you can’t fix, control, or fully understand.
That’s when spiritual beliefs really become practice.
There’s an old saying: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
I’d like to appropriate it for our topic today, consider:
When the going gets tough, our spiritual practices get going.
Not fixing.
Not figuring it all out.
Not attempting to control the outcome.
Just plain old practice.
And if I’m honest, that’s not always my first move.
Sometimes my first move is to find someone who agrees with me about how awful something is. You know… a little shared “awfulizing” can feel good.
But I can’t stay there very long anymore.
Because at some point, I remember—this is not only the work, this is the path.
There’s a story about a young monk who goes to an elder and says, “I want to grow spiritually, but life keeps bringing things I don’t know how to deal with—fear, uncertainty, disappointment. What do I do?”
And the elder says something incredibly simple:
“Welcome everything. Push away nothing.”
You might be thinking…
“Everything?”
Yes. Everything.
Not because everything is pleasant.
But because life—God, Spirit, whatever word you use—is still moving through everything.
Emma Curtis Hopkins, the mother of New Thought and Applied Metaphysics said it even more boldly:
“This too is good, this too is God, and I demand to see the blessing in it.”
Now let’s be clear—that doesn’t mean we look at something painful and pretend it’s good.
It means we refuse to believe that Spirit has somehow left the building.
Spirit is still here.
The question is …. are we?
Dr. Ira Byock tells a powerful story a man who was dying of cancer. And he said something that stopped everyone in their tracks.
The dying patient said, “I would never have chosen this illness… but I would not trade what it has given me.”
What it gave him was presence.
Before he got sick, he was busy—like most of us. Always moving, always doing. And then everything slowed down.
Conversations got deeper.
Time mattered more.
Ordinary moments became… not so ordinary.
And he said, “I wish I had learned this sooner.”
The illness wasn’t the blessing.
The awakening was the blessing.
I’ve been sitting with that a lot lately.
Because life has a way of bringing all of us moments that could take us down… yet those same moments can also awaken us to new life.
Awakening us to what matters, to Presence and to the people right in front of us. But we can only experience the newness if we make room for it. And in the midst of crisis and challenges it’s not usually our first instinct.
Let’s talk about expectancy for a moment and how that plays into all of this.
I’m not speaking about wishful thinking.
Rather I’m referring to a willingness to stay open to the possibility that something meaningful is still unfolding—even when we can’t see it yet. I’m suggesting that we learn to expect it even and especially in the face of disappointment and challenging times.
Because if we don’t make the space, well, it’s easy to get pulled into the appearance of things and assume that’s the whole story.
It isn’t.
So maybe the practice is simpler than we think.
When something hard shows up…
Pause.
Breathe.
Stay aware.
Remember the monk:
Welcome everything. Push away nothing.
Remember Hopkins:
This too is good… and I demand to see the blessing in it.
Not right away.
Not perfectly.
But sincerely. Because sometimes…
the blessing is not the removal of the difficulty,
but the awakening it brings.
