Why We Grow Weary in the Journey

I started on this writing journey enthusiastic, bright-eyed, and hopeful.

That was six years ago.

Now I’m weary, blurry-eyed, and discouraged.

Why?

What takes a determined person and zaps the life from her dreams?

Is it the struggles we face a long the way? The obstacles we must overcome?

Or is it the lack of results?

While I’ve had small successes in my writing career, I’m starting to wonder if it’s enough to sustain me. Yes, editors have been interested, even enthusiastic in my ideas over the last six years, but they’ve always ended in a rejection. Yes, I have an awesome, encouraging agent, but in the year and a half I’ve been with him he hasn’t sold my two manuscripts (by no fault of his own.) I’m slowing trudging through my current WIP in hopes it will be the one…

People tell me to be patient. I encourage others to be patient, but lately I’ve been wondering why we grow weary and why some people eventually quit.

I’m convinced it’s lack of results.

Apply it to any other area of life. Take my weightloss journey which I began anew this January. I did all the right things. Said my daily surrender statement, exercised daily, watched what I ate. But the scale didn’t cooperate. I calculated that if I did everything right I would lose 2 lbs. a week. By the end of the first month I lost 2 lbs. Not my original goal, but I persevered through the next month, slacking a little in my enthusiasm, still exercising though not as faithful in eating healthy on the weekends. Here it is the end of March and according to my original plan I should be 21lbs. lighter. Well, I’m not! Why? Because lack of results killed my enthusiasm, and it’s very discouraging to keep doing the hard things, the right things, to keep persevering without results.

Take a look in the Bible. Abraham was so discouraged when a son wasn’t born to Sarah that he took things into his own hands which ended in disaster. Though God was still faithful to his promise and turned it around, it was still less than what God had originally planned for Abraham. Same thing happened throughout Abraham’s family line. First the promise, then the wait, then the impatience and discouragement. Discouragement because of a lack of result which produced a lack of faith and the person taking things into his own hands.

It’s hard to persevere when our time table is light years ahead of God’s. When we think we know best and our timing is perfect. It’s hard to keep going without results. Big results! Little encouragements along the way like landing an agent or losing a few pounds help, but in the end what makes us stick it out? Results.

But when their are no results, all with have is faith. Faith. Is it enough to sustain? It is for me, for now. Though it’s not easy…

Is faith enough for you?

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9