The only way out is through.

Lately my husband and I have been playing Skyrim after the kids go to sleep.

Now, I generally like video games, but I also often find myself getting quite frustrated with them when they require skills like traveling about and fighting enemies. As in real life, I tend to be relatively smart at figuring out tricks and solving puzzles, but also I lack hand-eye coordination, I am directionally challenged, and I get easily overwhelmed by conflict.

Still, I enjoy the game on the whole, so I am persevering. I have joined the wizard college and am hoping to work myself up to a level where I can mostly conjure beings to fight on my behalf when fighting is necessary, and spend the rest of my time healing or "restoring" myself and others. (Bear with me, I promise this post is not entirely nerdy.)

I am not at that level yet, not by a long stretch. Right now I am going on quests at novice level, finding progressively more difficult opponents, and using my limited repertoire of spells and weapons to try to defeat them.

Night before last, I had to battle a particularly worthy opponent. I tried, tried and tried to defeat him, but kept getting killed myself. I tried different combinations of weapons and spells. I tried fighting him out in this large room, and then, taking a different tack, backed down a narrow corridor. I tried most everything I could think of, but my strength, stamina and skill were just not yet a match for this particular challenge.

I. HATE. THIS.

I found myself getting peevish and whiny. "Dang it!" I whisper-shouted at my husband after dying yet again (the kids were asleep). "I just want to BE BETTER AT THIS."

"But you are better. You're getting better - you're learning."

"No. I want to BE BETTER RIGHT NOW."

Finally, I just ended up quitting for the evening, leaving the monster to be defeated another day.

Today, I was on the phone with my business partner and we were discussing some of the challenges and opportunities facing our business right now. There are many of both - indeed oftentimes they are different sides of the same coin. We talked about a lot of options, a lot of directions we could take.  All of them require growing and changing, taking on new responsibilities, learning new skills, dropping old habits.

I felt that familiar feeling again.

I want to be better RIGHT NOW.

I want to fast forward ten years, to the level of knowledge and experience I'll have then, then rewind and solve today's problems in a faster, more efficient and less frustrating way.

I realize that I am often annoyed with myself for what I perceive as my own limited ability and knowledge. I need to know the answers RIGHT NOW to get this fixed, and I judge and berate myself for not being smart enough in this moment.

Of course, I'm demanding the impossible of myself. There's no way to be 2024 me, right now in 2014. Stating it that way, it's painfully logical - I'll have to do lots of stuff between now and then in order to get there. I have to have the experiences, there's no getting around it. And stating it that way, why would I want to fast forward? Would I really want to miss all the cool stuff that's tucked in there around all the lessons?

I can remember right after my first marriage fell apart, I was driving through one of the many tunnels we have around here, and I was wishing that I could just time travel somewhere in the future where the pain had passed. I can remember feeling at that moment like God spoke to me, and told me the pain was like the tunnel - there was no way out but through. That realization, that wish denied, felt kind of like smacking into a jersey wall.  But I also felt very plainly in that moment that He was going to ride along with me through the tunnel, and that made the trip seem like it might just be bearable. And I did bear it, and here I am, on the other side, remarried to the love of my life, with beautiful daughters and an overall amicable relationship with my first husband. Such joy awaited me. I could not know.

Right now I am going through nothing so earth-shattering as an unexpected, unwanted divorce, or the loss of a parent.  I'm just going through life. Work stuff, parenting stuff, wife stuff, faith stuff. I have to remember that no matter what the issue, the only way out is through... but it's worth it to see what's on the other side.