I don’t want to do this anymore,” my six-year-old granddaughter Gabriella announced, climbing off the stool at our kitchen counter. She’d been cutting out shamrocks to decorate the table for a family dinner.

I smiled, wanting to warn her that she was at the beginning of one of life’s steepest learning curves: to keep doing what we don’t want to do anymore. She went off to play, and while I continued cutting up vegetables for fajitas, I thought of some recent examples in my own life: finishing all twenty push-ups in an aerobics class when I was only on ten and my arms hurt; staying at the computer to complete a project when I’d rather have eaten cookies in the kitchen; sticking to a diet (because I ate too many of those cookies) rather than giving up; cleaning out a closet when I wanted to quit because I was tired of making decisions about what to keep and what to toss or give away.

Soon Gabi’s daddy came into the kitchen, sweating from a training run for an upcoming marathon. I asked him how he keeps going when he feels like stopping. “It’s hard,” he admitted, pouring himself a glass of water, “but when I push through that painful temptation to stop, I usually get a second wind.”

Lord, if I practice pushing through hard places, I learn perseverance. I guess that’s what You told me in the first place.