How many times have you heard it? "Just try harder!" It's only three little words, but wow are they loaded! Sometimes, that's a good thing. There are times that we need the gentle nudge to come alongside of us and encourage our forward progress. Hey, sometimes we even need a full on boot in the hindquarters to motivate us to use the strength that is lying dormant within us.

"Just try harder!" Sometimes that's all we need because there are a LOT of times in life that we are much stronger than we think, but we've become comfortably numb in a place far below our potential.

But that's not always the case, is it. How many times have we 'tried harder' and failed just as miserably, or even more so, than the previous attempts. How many times have you promised yourself that this time was going to be different because you were going to try even harder than you did the last time? I, for one, will admit that it's a lot more than I'd like to admit.

Trying harder works great when we have the inherent strength for the task, but let's be honest, just like we all have unique strengths, we all have unique weaknesses also, and trying harder does NOT work when we call upon a strength that we do not possess. It just causes us to fail with more flair.

The ugly side of trying harder.

This is where I'd love to use the example of someone else's failure, unfortunately one of my own failures is the best illustration I have at the moment. Please extend me some grace, I'm not perfect, and God is still working on me.

I remember the first time I went out to teach my oldest daughter to ride a bike. She was about 8 years old, and I was way behind in the 'teaching-to-ride-bike' category as a parent. We got a shiny new bike without any training wheels and went to a local park for the grand event.

As we got started, the excitement was high, and the mood was all kinds of positive. We took things nice and slow. I held the handlebars and seat, and she peddled along with the balance of a newborn calf (pretty wobbly for those of you who have never had the privilege).

Things progressed, but not as quick as I wanted them to. From my point of view, this was a 30 minute, one hour max, exercise in learning to ride the bike, but an hour and a half later, she was still not comfortable with me letting go.

And here is my failure... I got more and more frustrated as the time went on. I could get all into the psychology of why this event affected me so much, but let's just save that for another day and skip to the part where I started flipping out.

I don't think I had ever hollered at her before this day - and not many times since, but that day I did. I just couldn't understand what the difficulty was, so I told her to try harder. "Just try harder." "Come on, try harder!" "JUST DO IT!" She was getting more and more scared of the entire situation, which is not conducive to learning something new, and my frustration at what I perceived to be her unwillingness to simply 'try harder' peaked when she fell off the bike into the grass. I grabbed the bike, said some terribly hurtful things I'm not proud of, and stormed off to the van in frustration.

She followed me at a little distance, and when we got to the van I threw the bike in the back and turned around angrily only to discover giant tears quietly rolling down her beautifully innocent cheeks. For possibly the first time in her life, she felt like a failure, and it was entirely my fault.

And looking back, this is what I know about my daughter. She desperately wants to do things right and please the people in her life, especially her dad. So she kept trying harder, but at that time in her life, no matter how hard she tried, riding a bike on that particular day wasn't going to happen. So she did what we all do, she looked inward - called herself a failure (in whatever language an 8 year old uses) and silently filed away the shame filled words I had spoken to her. After all, dad seemed to think that she should be able to ride a bike already, and it came so easily for 'everyone' else - so all those words must be true.

The reality was that she hadn't failed at trying her best. She had given it her best. She had simply come to an obstacle that was bigger than she was at that point in her life. She hadn't failed at trying her best - I had failed at not realizing that 'trying harder' wasn't the answer on this occasion.

The Voice of Our Shame

If you're still reading without cursing me under your breath, thank you. I did my best to undo the damage I caused that day, and since then we've enjoyed many many bike rides together. But let's come back to us. How many times in life have we tried at something that comes easily for so many people - something just like riding a bike. It seems as though everyone does it without any effort, but we try and try and try, harder every time, but it just never works, and the entire time we hear the shame and guilt inducing voices of the dads and friends and coworkers and family and society who keep telling us over and over again that we are somehow defective and simply need to try harder.

Thus begins the cycle of unrealistic hopes that breed more shame and more guilt with each new failure until eventually we just quit hoping because the shame of failing again is too much to bare.

Admitting We Can't

So now you're reading this, and you're thinking about all the that 'thing' that you've tried harder and harder at without ever coming out on top. For a lot of people, that 'thing' is losing weight. Every year you sign up for the gym membership. You buy the colorful new shoes and shiny attractive water bottle. Maybe you even go all out and buy some fancy gadgets and gizmos to track your exercise and calorie burn. Every time, you think to yourself that it's going to work because you're 'trying harder' this time. Unfortunately, every year you come face to face with failure and shame.

Before you come to the conclusion that this may be the most discouraging article you've ever read, let me shine the light of hope and beauty onto those painful areas of failure that you've so desperately tried to cover up.

At some point in life, if we're wise, we come to the point that we stop trying harder and start trying something different. If we're really wise, we ask for help.

You see, God makes a unique promise to us in scripture regarding the areas of our lives that we are weak. The areas that 'trying harder' just doesn't work. The promise is made to the Apostle Paul at a point in his life that he had tried and prayed multiple times to conquer an area of difficulty in his own life without success.

2 Corinthians 12:9, The Lord says to the apostle Paul about weakness,

"9 But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

If God promises that his power rests on us in our weakness, and if He promises that in our weakness we can discover His great strength, then it also makes sense that the greatest places of weakness in our lives have the potential to become the places of the greatest display of God's transforming power. They have the potential to become the areas of our lives that people stand in awe and wonder how you did it.

You see, the person who can do it on their own will continue in their own strength, but the person who realizes that they've come to an obstacle bigger than they are has the opportunity to ask for and receive God's infinite power in that area of their life. In fact, I'm convinced that you'll never know greater strength in life than the kind you discover in the areas of weakness that you have turned over to God.

An Invitation

It's with that understanding that I'd like to extend an invitation to you today. A few invitations really. First of all, I'd like to invite you to stop trying to fight a battle that you can't possibly win. I'd like to invite you to silence all of the voices that assault you in the secret places of your heart and mind. I'd like to invite you to place all the broken pieces of your broken efforts into the miracle working nail scarred hands of a God who loves you with a perfectly compassionate and understanding love. I invite you, even right now, to take a moment to ask for Him to give you His strength in exchange for your weakness. Yeah, right now, wherever you are, God is there too. Simply close your eyes and let your soul run into the arms of your loving heavenly Father.

Finally, as a Christ centered organization dedicated to helping women and men find freedom from the hopelessness and chains of obesity, I'd like to invite you to consider allowing us to walk this journey out with you. As individuals who have been exactly where you are, we know the struggles you face and the hope that is available to you. Our prayer is that His radiance will shine through those areas in life that have been darkened by the shame of failure.

See my extraordinarily beautiful and talented daughter below. Thankfully, she still loves me.

---

---

* Individual results may vary.