Irritating Challenge

Christmas day I was irritated with my mom for the puzzle she picked to do. One of the few Christmas traditions our family has is to do a jigsaw puzzle on Christmas Day. This year, just like last year she had saved a really difficult puzzle for the two of us to work on together. I took one look at it and knew it would be up to me to do that puzzle because she wouldn’t be able to and it really wasn’t one I wanted to work on. I let her work on it and I puttered around doing just about anything else except work on that puzzle.

The next day when I got up I almost just put the puzzle away because I had a rotten attitude but instead I sat down and started working on it and it turned out that I got totally engrossed in it and almost finished it that evening. I had to make myself stop so that there would be some left for my mother to do when she came back over on New Year’s Day.

I totally got involved in the challenge of getting it figured out and completed. A puzzle I didn’t even want to start and was upset about having to work on turned out to be fun and I felt good about getting it done.

How often do we look at challenges in our lives as I did that puzzle, something that we just don’t want to do, something that we dread and would rather just put away and not do it. Any just like that puzzle the sense of accomplishment that comes for doing something we just don’t feel we can.