Living out in the country makes my life so much better. Living out in the county in a valley with winding roads leading up beautiful wood-covered hills would have been a dream come true if I had thought to dream about it as a youngester. Living where snow piles up and turns the world into a peaceful haven of breathtaking delightfulness just makes everything better.

But doing all that in a vehicle that isn’t four-wheel drive? Well, it’s perhaps not optimal.

In the last two weeks I’ve had two days when I couldn’t get to work at the coffee shop due to icy roads. Therefore, on Wednesday when my brother told me he thought I could make it as long as I only drove five to ten miles per hour and went the long way around (bypassing most of the hills), I headed off.

Y’all. It generally takes me around 42-45 minutes to get to work. On Wednesday? It took me over an hour and a half. That’s why I was thankful I had packed an overnight bag and thrown it into the car. That way I was able to spend the night at my sister’s house because she lives a lot closer to town than I do, and that made my commute home from work, and to work the next day, a lot shorter.

Sometimes it feels like being a writer is somewhat like trying to figure out how to get to town from a snow-covered valley in a none-four-wheel-drive-car.

Y’all. I have gone the loonnngggg way around with some of my writing. The last few years I’ve spent so much time learning and growing with the writing craft. Looking at my writing from a few years ago I sigh at how horrible it is. But, in reality, there’s no feasible way to get from where I was to where I wanted to be without the long, slow, (and sometimes painful) journey.

I’m sure there are some people who can naturally whip out great stories after only a few drafts, even early on in their career. I’m not one of those people. Over the years several people who have helped me with writing have remarked that I’m not really a natural writer. I just a very passionate writer with a lot of imagination.

Hard work trumps talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

That quote is the refrain of my writing life. Just because I’m not as talented in writing as some people doesn’t mean I can’t do it. It just means I’m going to have to work a lot harder than if I was more naturally gifted with writing. And please don’t misunderstand, I do feel like God has gifted me with writing – just more in the imagination and delight of words field than with the actual putting-them-into-cohesive-sentences-with-plotlines-that-make-sense type of deal. And I’m okay with that. I’m thankful for who God made me, and very thankful for the ability to learn and grow and that with a lot of hard work I can accomplish what some others accomplish faster through natural talents.

I don’t know if there’s an area in your life that you’re working on where you have to crawl for ever-so-long as you go the long way around the valley instead of just up and over the hill. But if there is? Take courage. If you’re doing what you need to do, if you’re where you’re supposed to be, then the amount work, however daunting it may be, is worth it in the end.

The road might be long, but the great part about it is that the best part isn’t always the destination – most of the time it’s the journey as well. So, even if the journey takes you ten years when it might take someone else two years, that doesn’t mean they get the better deal, it just means y’all are going to have different thoughts, experiences, and breakthroughs as you work your way to your goal.

And that’s actually pretty cool.