The million dollar question: is it worth it?

I was messaging with a friend yesterday who's been going through a hard time. She's persistently battled to overcome it, but feels like she keeps coming up short.

She said, "is any of this worth the price?"

As I am writing this, I feel glad she posed that as a question and not a statement. I'm glad she asked if it's worth it instead of declaring that it's not. Because it gave me a chance to answer her heartfelt question and not cast judgment on her challenging feelings.

I answered her, "everything good comes at a price, but that price rarely feels good when we're living in it."

That's not an answer I read in a book but one I've lived. It's an answer that comes from many past moments of hell, blinded to the possibility of any value in those moments at all - only to find out later I was just paying the price for future goods.

Or, future goodness.

It's one of the greater challenges of life, that we are often paying the price for beauty we can't see coming. If we only had certainty about that beauty, maybe the price wouldn't feel so burdensome.

I've come to wonder, though, is it the burdensome price that actually creates the beauty? Is it prolonged hopelessness that actually helps paint the ultimate picture and feeling of hope?

I don't know, but I believe there's enough truth in there that when we get to the point of asking - "is any of it worth the price" - to consider that it possibly is.

Or probably.

It's worth considering that the burdens of right now are always trying to hide the beauty of tomorrow. Maybe burdens are evil, or maybe they are just tough love friends.

I don't know.

All I know is there have been many moments in my life when I could have asked, is any of this worth the price?

In those moments, I would have always said no. Nothing is worth this. But today, many days and years on the other side of those moments, I know the goodness that came from them.

Today I know it is so; they were worth it.

Which is why I don't ask much any more, is this worth the price? I simply trust that it is.

Because everything good comes at a price, but that price rarely feels good when we're living in it.

If you feel like you're paying a price today that doesn't feel good, please hang on, the worth is on its way.

The price you're paying is paving that way.