"All Struggle is Not Loss."

"There is no one who does not have to choose sometime, someway, between giving up and growing stronger as they go along.  And yet if we give up in the midst of struggle, we never find out what the struggle would have given us in the end.  If we decide to endure it to the end, we come out of it changed by the doing of it.  It is a risk of mammoth proportions.  We dare the development of the self.... Life forges us in struggle... all struggle is not destructive... it is not struggle that defeats us, it is our failure to struggle that depletes the human spirit.... Struggle is part of life.  In fact, struggle is an unavoidable part of life.  It comes with birth and it takes its toll at every stage of development.  In each of them we strive for something new at the price of something gained.  We tussle between the dark and the daylight moments of the soul.  If we stop struggling, we may die.  But if we struggle and lose, we stand to die as well.  So how are we to think of struggle?  Is it loss or is it gain?....    Life itself is the answer..... No other dimension of life can possibly offer it because no other process in life requires so much so deeply of us. Struggle bores down into the deepest part of the human soul.... bringing new life... The problem is that struggle requires the most of us just when we expect it least."

Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope by Joan D. Chittister