Endurance

Does anyone really like the word endurance? Endured maybe, for it indicates that the experience is over. But endurance is hard. You keep with something just because you must, you should, or you want to. No matter the reason you are digging in when so much seems to say, "Quit!"

 Several years ago my school decided that the lobby of the girls' dorm should be tiled. The materials were purchased and some of the teachers became students. How do you lay tile? We endured pulling up the carpet, the easiest part of the entire process. Then came scraping up the glue, tile needs a smooth surface. Everyone displayed endurance, for the glue would not come up. But it had to come up. There was no choice. So we scraped. Finally, we could lay tile.We stooped and scraped and spread (our math teacher in the picture gained a new respect for surface area). Endurance was again called for. I cut tile, then re-cut tile.

Just as we began to think that we would never stand straight again, we finished. We had endured. It is such a sweet experience to enter that lobby now. All the enduring past, now there is just the "fruits of our labor".

What enduring right now?