Doing Hard Better

Somewhere along the way, many of us began believing the goal of life was comfort.

If we’re doing things right, life should get easier. Relationships should become effortless. Leadership should become less demanding. Parenting should become less stressful. Faith should eliminate suffering. But life doesn’t work that way. Neither does Scripture.

Jesus never promised an easy life. He promised His presence.

There’s a difference.

The absence of difficulty is not the evidence of God’s blessing. Sometimes difficulty is exactly where God does His deepest work.

I can say that with a straight face because of what I’m about to tell you.

You already know about my cave — the season after the school I poured my life into came apart. What I haven’t told you yet is what came after. Because the cave wasn’t the end of the hard.

It was the beginning of the reps.

When I left York, I went to Florida to work as a dean of students and athletic director. Here’s the thing about me: I know schools, and I know young people. You can drop me anywhere in this country and I’ll start over. That’s the easy part.

The hard part was that my heart was broken. My wife didn’t follow me to Florida — she went to New Hampshire. And after six months of trying to convince her to come south, I made a decision.

I dropped everything and moved north, to try to save what was left of broken relationships.

Me, my three teenage sons, and everything we owned in a U-Haul.

Each move cost me more of my finances. Memories lost in storage units I could no longer pay for. We landed in Bristol, New Hampshire — a different world from anything I’d known, with not many opportunities for a man like me.

I was in a dark place.

At some point I mustered enough strength to volunteer at the local community center that was doing amazing work. That turned into a part-time job.

And then one day I made a decision that changed everything. I said to myself: I built my reputation once in York — as a school counselor, as a basketball coach. I’ll just build it again. From nothing.

So I started training kids in the community.

My first session? My own three sons. That was the whole program. A broken man, a borrowed gym, and his own children.

One rep.

Then another kid came. Then a few more. One session at a time. One family at a time. One season at a time.

Five years later, it had grown to fifteen teams. The training led to coaching at a local high school. The coaching led to the work I do now as a crisis interventionist — walking with young people through the worst days of their lives.

Brick by brick. From the inside out. I’m still not where I want to be. And honestly? I’m kind of old to be starting over. But I follow what I’ve learned in Scripture, and here’s the truth: God worked with a lot of old guys. Abraham. Moses. Caleb.

I figure I’m in good company — as long as I don’t quit.

Heck, I even had a heart attack in the middle of all this. During COVID, I thought I had pneumonia. If my wife Tricia hadn’t insisted I go to the hospital, I’m not sure I’d be writing this book. It turned out I was in heart failure. There’s a defibrillator in my chest as I write these words. I’ll tell you that whole story in a coming chapter, because it deserves its own.

But notice something: even the heart got the same treatment as everything else.

I turned it around. Lost fifty pounds. Changed my diet completely. Today, with great doctors, medication, and that device standing guard, my heart is strong again.

One rep at a time.

Life didn’t get easier.

I learned to do hard better.

I’ve never met someone I admire who had an easy story. Not one.

The people with the deepest compassion usually know suffering. The strongest leaders usually carry scars. The wisest parents usually learned through mistakes. The most patient teachers usually struggled before they succeeded. The coaches who change lives usually lost games that taught them more than championships ever could.

Growth almost always comes disguised as difficulty.

When we think about David, we usually picture him defeating Goliath. Or becoming king.

But David wasn’t formed on the battlefield.

He was formed in the cave. Hiding. Waiting. Questioning. Praying. Running. Learning to trust God when nothing made sense.

The cave wasn’t a detour. It was the classroom.

And here’s what I want you to notice: David didn’t leave the cave and walk straight into a palace. There were years between the cave and the crown. Years of reps. Battles nobody recorded. Faithfulness nobody applauded.

Sometimes God prepares us in hidden places before He entrusts us with visible influence. A community center in a small New Hampshire town is a hidden place. So is a borrowed gym with three teenage boys in it.

God does some of His best work in rooms nobody is watching.

The Wrong Goal As leaders, parents, teachers, and coaches, we often want to protect people from hard things. Because we love them.

But protection can quietly become prevention.

If we remove every obstacle, how will resilience grow? If we solve every problem, how will wisdom develop? If we rescue every struggle, how will courage emerge?

Love doesn’t remove every challenge. Love walks beside people while they face it.

Jesus calmed storms. He also led His disciples directly into them.

No one is born resilient.

Resilience is formed. One challenge at a time. One disappointment. One failure. One difficult conversation. One season of waiting.

Each moment becomes another opportunity to discover: I can do hard things.

Confidence doesn’t come from avoiding difficulty. It comes from surviving it.

That’s why athletes improve through resistance. Muscles strengthen under stress.

Character does too.

That’s what reps are. Nobody gets strong lifting a weight once. You lift it again. And again. And on the days you don’t want to. Starting over in Florida was a rep. The U-Haul was a rep. Volunteering when I had nothing left was a rep. The first session with my sons was a rep. Fifteen teams was five years of reps that each looked, on the day itself, like almost nothing.

You don’t have to do something heroic today.

You have to do a rep.

When someone we love struggles, we naturally want to make the pain disappear. Sometimes we should. Sometimes we can’t.

The greatest gift isn’t always removing the burden. It’s refusing to let them carry it alone. God doesn’t promise a life without valleys. He promises His presence in them — and He calls us to offer people the same.

Success isn’t raising children who never struggle. It’s raising adults who know how to struggle well.

Success isn’t coaching athletes who never fail. It’s coaching athletes who get back up.

Success isn’t building organizations without problems. It’s building cultures that face problems with courage. The measure of maturity isn’t avoiding hardship. It’s responding to hardship with faith, hope, wisdom, and perseverance.

By the world’s measure, my story reads like a fall: from founding a school to volunteering at a community center. By Heaven’s measure, I suspect it reads differently. The man in the borrowed gym was healthier than the man with the title. He just didn’t have the résumé to prove it yet.