“All I knew about was trying …” Joyce Meyer’s from her book If Not for the Grace of God

Listening to a friend tell all the things she’d done for her daughter before their estrangement, I sympathized when she said, “I don’t know what else I could have done. I tried so hard.” 

Another friend pulled out tissue after tissue while trying to tell me what happened to her marriage, “I took him back and took him back and took him back. I tried everything with that man.” 

Not too long before these conversations, Prophet Jim Reilly said to me, “You’ve been trying for 18 years and you haven’t been able to do it … yet. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

I can’t count the times I’ve heard friends talk about how hard they tried, how tired they felt, and how low they sank when trying hard didn’t work. 

Here’s my short list of the areas I tried my hardest and failed the most …    

I tried hard to silence my fears and be quiet.

I tried hard to get relationships right. 

I tried hard to do only right things. 

I tried hard to straighten out my emotions

I tried hard to repair other’s brokenness and mine.

I tried hard to calm down enough to pray and read my Bible.

I tried hard to serve without wanting something too.

I tried hard to make Jesus a priority over people. 

I tried hard to stay out of other’s lives and get my own. 

I tried hard to practice patience over pushiness, count on faith instead of force, and trust grace in the place of grit, but, finally, I had to admit …

Trying hard didn’t work. 

Thankfully, there’s hope on the other side, so I hope you’ll hang around for it. Until then, join our conversation. See y’all on Monday.

In This Together,
Kim