If you want your life to matter and you want to make the most of your relationships, your sense of call and work, then prepare to embrace inconvenience.
Call it the road less traveled or whatever metaphor comes to mind, but the truth is that the best stuff of life is almost always inconvenient at some point.
It’s Never Convenient To…
get up at 5 AM to exercise or have time for personal prayer and reflection
have a hard but necessary conversation with someone you love
be the parent who stays at home for a week with young kids while the other parent travels across the ocean to serve others
learn a new language to better relate to someone you want to build a relationship with
stay up late to talk with your child after they get home from an important event in their life
You get the idea.
The Easier The Better. Or Maybe Not.
We’re becoming more programmed as a society to make choices based on convenience. If something is easy, simple and less disruptive to our usual routines, it’s the better choice. If something requires more of us, is costly or time-consuming, then that option is less desirable and more likely to be avoided.
Think of someone you know who has made a meaningful contribution to the world. If you were to ask that person to describe what it has taken to make the contribution he or she has made, you would undoubtedly hear stories of sacrifice, personal cost, and inconvenience.
The quick easy stuff of life is usually more temporal. We get immediate satisfaction from it. The stuff that takes time, effort, energy, stamina, and determination is where the good things happen, where we experience the growth and the deeper more meaningful outcomes we long for.
Yesterday as I was flipping through radio channels while driving, I just caught the tail end of someone saying, “Place your kid in the farthest school possible, and then personally drive him or her to and from school every day because those conversations you will have in the car will become some of your most treasured memories.”
How inconvenient, but true.
This made me think about our family. For the past year and a half, we pile into our van every Sunday to drive 40 minutes one way to attend church services.
When we started, the amount of conflict we had to endure during those drives was staggering.
You’re seat is back too far, I don’t have enough room
Why do I always have to sit in the back (if no one was there), or
It’s my turn to sit in the back (if someone was already there).
At times Charles and I would look at each other and wonder why we were doing this to ourselves.
It was hard at first, but you know what? The inconvenience of that drive has been a gift. Our family has grown closer together over the past year and a half, and while the weekly drive isn’t the entire reason, it’s certainly been part of what has helped us to grow closer. The drive forced us to learn how to talk, and be in each other’s space in better ways.
Was it more inconvenient to drive that far to go to church? Yes. But worth it on many levels.
Learn To See The Opportunity
Don’t rule something out just because it’s inconvenient. In fact, if it’s inconvenient that’s a clue to stop and think, Maybe there’s an important growth opportunity here that will lead to desirable outcomes. We can learn to recognize the opportunity that lies within inconvenience with some intentional reflection on our choices.
Embracing inconvenience for all the right reasons is necessary to grow, expand, develop and become all you are meant to be. Following your call will require embracing inconvenience.
How about you? Can you think of a time when you chose the more inconvenient way and the outcomes were worth it? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!
May we each learn to see the opportunity in what seems like an inconvenience.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. – Gilbert K. Chesterton