In November of 1994, I started working through the book, Six Weeks to a Simpler Lifestyle by Barbara Degrote-Sorensen and David Allen Sorenson. This is what I wrote in my journal that first week.
Persistence in spite of pitfalls. Nothing worthwhile can be accomplished without it. I have picked the most difficult time of year to attempt simplicity [the Christmas season]. I must expect pitfalls and setbacks. Indeed, I may even welcome them, for they prove I’ve begun to move in the right direction!
These [study] questions are interesting. They ask me how I will deal with
1) too slow progress, 2) seemingly unchangeable attitudes (mine and others), and 3) falling short and wanting to quit. Then it asks how I’ve made healthy changes before and what kept me going.
The three questions are about one thing: discouragement. Right now, I’m so buoyed up by this study that I can’t imagine being discouraged. But I will create a visual image to get me over future pitfalls:
I visualize a stream full of rocks. The water makes happy sounds as it flows in and among the boulders. The rocks are smooth and beautiful but they did not start that way. Once they were jagged and rough. It took years of sitting in the stream for them to become smooth.
I will sit in the stream of grace and mercy until my rough edges are smoothed, too, and my life is made beautiful and simple.”
As a deer gets thirsty for streams of water,
I truly am thirsty for you, my God.
In my heart, I am thirsty for you, the living God.
Why am I discouraged? Why am I restless? I trust you!
And I will praise you again because you help me, and you are my God.
Psalm 42:1-2, 11 Contemporary English Version (CEV)
The most essential factor is persistence –
the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
James Whitcomb Riley