Life can be hard

 Life doesn't get any easier.  I always thought it would when I was young, but it doesn't.  Certain parts become easier.  Talking to people you don't know, finding places you've never been to and so on.  Relationships have times of happiness and an ease of tempo, but the times of struggle and disagreements always come if you are being honest with yourself and your significant other.  I started my marriage, just trying to please even if that meant sacrificing who I was.  Truly, I didn't have much say in who I was as an adolescent, so I'm not sure I really knew who I was, but regardless, I just made myself fit the mold because I thought that was how I could be loved.  In the times I did not do this, there were heated, loud arguments that resulted in the "silent treatment" and hurt feelings.  Then a baby came unplanned and the focus switched.  The next 10+ years I couldn't hide who I really was, but I did try to change who he was so that he would be the father to our kids that I always wanted my father to be to me.  Ridiculous and futile, but I tried anyway.  In the mean time, the ways he could have helped me out, I instead tried to control and do "perfectly" by doing it myself, and he felt useless and neglected.  Fast forward 8-10 years. Teenage years have been hard.  Grades are a challenge, girl attitudes and emotions are a challenge, finances are a challenge, schedules of working, going from here to there for games and tournaments and practices are a challenge.  Somewhere in there, it happened.  Disconnect.  He felt more and more neglected and useless since girls tend to go to their moms for personal stuff unless their dad is used to talking about "girl stuff" without trying to fix things, and we just stopped talking about anything except "you're doing this wrong, or who is taking her to practice this time, and how are we going to deal with this problem?"  Huge disconnect.  (Enter temptation here.)  Fast forward to present day and here we are dealing with the consequences of sin in our marriage.  Sure, we deal with sin every day, but this is huge.  God is healing us.  God is changing us.  God is healing our marriage.  God is healing our home.  But, we are still on earth, so each day brings its own new challenges. 

"Difficulties and obstacles are God's challenges to faith. When hindrances confront us in the path of duty, we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fullness and all-sufficiency of Jesus; and as we go forward, simply and fully trusting Him, we may be tested, we may have to wait and let patience have its perfect work; but we will surely find at last the stone rolled away, and the Lord waiting to offer us double for our time of testing." --A. B. Simpson