Life, Struggles, and Stones

Life is hard. Sometimes insanely, please make it stop, hard. Does it have to be this way? Does everyone struggle like this?

In those dark moments of depression or sadness, it seems like no one else could possibly have it so bad. But I promise you, we all have our share of bad times. And I’m not here to tell you why we have these struggles, why is a dangerous question anyway, but I want to give you an idea of what to do when you find yourself in them.

Years ago, someone told me an example that I will never forget when it comes to hardship and difficulty. They said that hardships are like an old fashioned grinding stone. These were stones that looked a bit like donuts that would be turned quickly on an apparatus and used to sharpen tools. The idea was that the stone would create the friction to grind the metal of the tool to the desired sharpness. But when it comes to these grinding stones, it’s all about the angle.

If you hold an axe at a shallow angle, down close to the stone, the grinding shaves off the rough parts of the axe and creates a nice sharp edge. But if you hold the axe at a 90 degree angle, perpendicular to the grinding stone, it will instead grind the axe down, making it dull, and given enough time, grind it down until it is useless. One option creates a more efficient tool, the overall effect being positive and helpful. The other option destroys, ruins, and damages. In both cases, the grinding stone is the same, and the axe is the same. But how we hold the axe makes all the difference.

So it is with life’s difficulties. They grind on us. They hurt. And unfortunately, we can’t stop them from happening. They are our grinding stones. We are the axe. How we hold ourselves makes all the difference. We can come out the other side of trials and struggles being sharpened, honed, and better off, or they can bring us down and destroy us.

So how do we change our angle? Ultimately this depends on the struggle, but some general principles are do we flow with it or resist? Do we let the stone roll under us, or do we bush against it and grind us down. Do we seek help? Do we accept that sometimes bad things happen, or do we shame ourselves and believe that bad things happen because we are somehow bad or unworthy of better things? There are many ways to make it through difficulties better than we started, but it is easier to get ground down.

Now sometimes we can hold ourselves at the right angle, but other times we need help, someone else to hold us. We need support to help us get the right angle. We need the help of friends, family, community, ecclesiastical leaders, therapists, authors, doctors, or any number of sources of support. When we are too overwhelmed or depressed, they can ease the friction and help you hold out until the difficulty passes. If you find yourself getting ground down, reach out for help and support.

Now this is certainly a simplification. Changing the angle of an axe is much simpler that changing your personal orientation during difficulty. But by finding strength, acceptance, support, and all other ways of fine tuning your life, we can make it through hard things without losing ourselves.