In the presence of hardship seek truth and seek trust.  Truth will allow you to know the suffering you have carried.  It will allow you to know how hard things have actually been, whether mentally, emotionally or physically.  Out of this truth can come compassion for oneself, compassion built on love and on knowing how difficult it has been to get through.

Ongoing hardship can create discouragement.  Yet discouragement is not despair.  Discouragement wedded to truth, to compassion, and to trust becomes a prayer to the One for things to change.  It becomes a prayer to the One for trust in the goodness of life and in the possibility of feeling upheld and strengthened during whatever time of hardship remains. 

Despair is not discouragement.  Despair is based in hopelessness and denies the possibility of both hope and trust.  It denies the possibility of being upheld in the midst of the greatest hardship.

Therefore, beloved ones, in the presence of hardship allow yourself to be real.  Allow yourself to feel pain with compassion, with trust, with truth.  Allow yourself to know how you have struggled to endure and to meet the challenges that you have had to meet.  Let truth, compassion, and trust join together as a prayer within your heart and in this way remain true to the light and truth of your own deepest being.

Related Writings:

Holding Hardship in the Light of God: The Challenge of Purification

Purification and the Experience of Helplessness

Articles on Financial Hardship and the Soul

Article Section -  Purification