Every morning I wake up and wonder whether I will be able to do the impossible.
There is too much to do. There are so many questions, so many problems, so many needs—and those are just the ones I can anticipate in the early part of the day. Sometimes I worry that I won’t have enough hours or enough patience or enough skill or knowledge to manage it all.
But every day I get out of bed and begin.
I feed our birds.
I fill the coffeemaker and turn it on.
I get breakfast ready for our boys.
I answer emails. I take phone calls. I respond to texts. I read and write and listen and talk.
The minutes fly by. The work gets done. My children play and laugh and seem to grow taller by the minute.
I stumble plenty of times during the day. Some afternoons I realize I’m way overdue feeding people lunch. Other times I think I’m falling behind in every part of my life. But somehow, some way, everything comes together—or at least the things that really needed to come together happen. Some days I look back and feel I’ve achieved the impossible. And I know it’s because God walked with me through the day.
As a writer, I often wonder whether my well will run dry. What if this time I can’t find the right words? What if I can’t find them under deadline? Somehow I always have—so far. But there are moments when it seems impossible and I find myself calling on the Holy Spirit for words, for wisdom.
I think perhaps I know how St. Peter feels. He asks Jesus for an impossible task—to walk on water. He wants to believe he can do what Jesus tells him to do. He knows, deep within himself, that he can. Then he sees the strength of the wind, though, and he gets scared and starts to sink.
It’s easy to be scared. It’s human to be scared. Sometimes I think it might even be important to be scared. We should be scared about failing, especially when we’re grappling with the big important tasks that Jesus gives us.
But it’s also important to remember we are never alone. Jesus’ hand is always there, ready to reach out and steady us, giving us the confidence and strength we need as we walk across the water.
In this time when the problems seem so enormous and we might face uncertainty and anxiety, may we have the faith that, with God’s guidance, we can and will achieve the impossible.
As St. Francis of Assisi says, “Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
With the grace of God, let’s do the impossible again today.
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