Have you ever taken time to explain something in great detail to someone, like how to play a new board game for instance, and after your lengthy explanation the other person says, "Oh, I wasn't listening. Let's just play the game, and I'll try to learn as we go."
It feels fruitless when our energy is wasted or disregarded. It's like answering someone's question three times, and then he says, "What did you say? I wasn't listening." It's sort of in line with working really hard to earn something only to learn everyone else got it for free. You begin to ask yourself-- why even try? Is the effort worth it?
Yet the same is true if you look at this question backwards. Without the work, is it truly rewarding?
We all know food tastes better when we are hungry, our bed feels better when we haven't slept, and our longing for someone increases with his/her absence. But as advanced humans, we continue to find ways to make life effortless. It's a natural tension-- we don't want to feel uncomfortable by work, but we also put forth a lot of effort if we really want something (money, power, physique and property to name a few things). Still, even in these popular rewards, we look to cut corners, invent shortcuts, or even steal, cheat, or lie to earn an easy benefit.
After living in a beautiful lake house near the mountains for over two weeks, we came to enjoy the ease of central heating, a washer and dryer, a dishwasher and a single button to start a fire...all at our immediate disposal with quick and easy benefits. More than that we didn't have to tiptoe in the morning to avoid waking our kids because we had multiple bathrooms and bedrooms!
However, I could see how our ability to appreciate these things would diminish the longer we had them. The less effort to make the fire, the easier it was to forget it was on. The less time to make coffee, the less I appreciated every sip. The more we had, the easier it was to critique it.
Sooner or later we would need increased luxury to match the scale of increased experiences and corresponding expectations. Inconvenience and effort are relatively objective terms, but work always comes into count.
The less you work for your dollar, the less it will mean to you when it loses its value. Without work, we don't enjoy a full reward. The same is true for relationships, jobs, and life in general. You must work through the hard parts to enjoy the long term good. As the saying goes, “There's no reward without work, no victory without effort, no battle won without risk.” (Nora Roberts, Key of Knowledge)
As we venture back out west for year two of full-time RVing, I realize that we will have to work even more. It takes more work to set up and break down our home as more things are breaking, but we believe the long term rewards will outweigh the temporary hardship. We will have to work on our relationships more. Being together all the time in tight quarters takes work, meeting new people takes work, but again the rewards are far better in the end than if we stay comfortable and put forth little effort in our relationships.
We will face more trials as we travel, but even though we "have to suffer trials of all kinds [as anyone does at home or on the road], trials come so that our faith is proven genuine—which is of greater worth than gold, and it allows us to persevere. Perseverance or patience must finish working so that we are mature and complete, lacking nothing." (1 Peter 1:6-7, James 1:4) There is proof of good work right there. We pray our work today grows our faith tomorrow, so please pray for us. Pray we all keep putting forth effort into what really matters.
We aren't guaranteed trials or blessings today or tomorrow, but our efforts in this life will make our work an act of worship for the next. We believe that the end is not when we hit a life of comfortable cruise-control. It's not when we fix everything and make it as easy as possible. But rather, when we choose not to lose heart when our home and our relationships feel broken because "even though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is forever." (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)
Here's to working towards forever...
~Working Carefully & Carelessly
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