When my family served as missionaries in Mexico, people back home carried a set of assumptions about what that life was like. I once wrote them out as perception versus reality, and the older I get, the more I realize they weren’t really about missions at all. They were about every hard, worthwhile season of life.

Perception: it’s all purpose, all the time. Reality: it takes a long time to set up a life. In a new country, paying the water bill could take an entire day. Planning something familiar took four times longer in a new language. The truer sentence was: it’s all learning, all the time.

Perception: the hard parts make it miserable. Reality: the inconveniences were real — and forgotten quickly, because meaning has a way of shrinking discomfort.

Perception: people living their calling float on cloud nine. Reality: there are seasons of frustration — new dynamics, new culture, learning to live by faith when the ground feels unfamiliar.

Perception: it’s worth it. Reality: it’s worth it.

The seasons where everything takes six times longer

Maybe you’re not moving to another country. But maybe you’re recovering from surgery, and buttoning a shirt takes six times longer than it used to. Maybe you’re learning a new diagnosis, and every appointment feels like a new language. Maybe you’re caring for a parent, and errands that used to take an hour now take a day.

Hear me: that is not failure. That is formation. Seasons where everything takes longer are not evidence you’re doing it wrong — they are usually evidence you’re doing something that matters in territory that’s new. The learning curve is the terrain of every meaningful thing I’ve ever done.

So be patient with yourself the way you’d be patient with someone learning a new language — because that’s what you’re doing. And when you’re tempted to score the season by its speed, remember there are two lines at the bottom of my old list, and they say the same thing.

Don’t take my word for it — examine your own hardest seasons honestly. Weren’t they also the ones that formed you most? It’s worth it. It’s worth it.

— Reggie