Joy and Confidence With Doing Something Difficult

"You all wanted to go play in the water,  why aren't you coming in?" Words of the father of Han Pia, at water's edge. "Because it's  cold," was the children's answer."

"How do you know that without entering the water and seeing for yourself. Come on in,  if too cold you can always return to the shore." These words of her  father, she has never forgotten, and writes in  With Bible magazine that she often uses the same words with others, a valuable gift from her father.

Han Pia is  principal of the World Vision School of Global Citizenship, and writes about her experience, and what she has learned. For 6 years with a knapsack she has  traveled around the world, and experienced many difficulties. According to a Korean proverb, she recalls, when young these difficulties in old age would be worth even paying for them.

On one transcontinental train trip from Moscow to Beijing she traveled for 7 nights and 8 days. After that trip she has never complained of a  long, tiring trip. In China she was on a train that was crowded, like the subways in Korea around the New Year, and she had to stand all the way for 30 hours.

In India she was sick from food poisoning and her whole body was a rash, making matters worse,  she was attacked by mosquitoes and bedbugs which made her feel as if she was in a bee hive, her whole body smarting and swollen. On another occasion she was taking antimalarial medicine and the reaction to the medicine was nausea, and couldn't eat for two weeks.

She thought walking for 10 hours was her limit, but she did on one occasion walk for 15 hours which raised her expectations. She has extended this in  mountain climbing to 22 hours, and now wants to test her body for another longer mountain climbing experience.

Recently she met a woman who had walked a mountain trail for 30  hours. She envied the woman and made up her mind this new lunar new year to make the same trip. She doesn't know if her knees will hold up, but she will not know until she tries.

She recommends to the readers of her article to do something during  the new year which they would ordinarily consider difficult but a good, and have so far avoided. They will gain confidence, strength and  courage, helping them face the difficulties that come along in life.