I AM Tough!

The other day, my boss was teasing me, as he loves to do so often. I take it very well, and occasionally dish it back. As the morning went on, and the teasing persisted, he made the comment, “You’re not very tough. So-and-so is tougher than you.”

I thought about this statement, “You’re not very tough”, for several days after.

Although he was just teasing me, I began to think about this comment in a much deeper sense.

I AM tough. I am tougher than most people around me realize.

And you are too.

As we look around at our fellow co-workers, friends, family and strangers, we have no idea what struggles they are dealing with. Sometimes, people are more open about their problems, but other times they keep their trails to themselves.

For example, anyone who reads this blog, or is close to me, knows about my struggle with infertility. But they don’t know the other things I have dealt with over these past 7 years, whether they are professional, personal, or spiritual.

We see someone on a daily or weekly basis, and we think we know them. But we may not really know them at all. We could label someone as ‘tough’, and discredit another as ‘weak’, and we could be completely backwards.

We are promised we will not be given more than we can handle. For some people, a certain trail is all they could take. It completely turns their world upside-down, and makes them question everything they’ve ever been sure of before. But someone else could take on that trial along with 3 others, and still smile at the end of the day.

It is not up to us to determine who is ‘tough’. It is up to us to BE tough, and to rest comfortably in that knowledge, despite how others may perceive us.