We all Struggle

I have always loved to read.  I love mysteries, thrillers, fantasy and even an occasional love story.  Interestingly enough, every single story that I read has some sort of a struggle going on throughout the chapters.  Every Hero has to go through the trial before they find their happily ever after. 
The struggle is always a central factor of the story.  It wasn't until recently that I have been able to understand how this applies to my own life.  We all want the happily ever after ending.  We all want to have to good parts in our lives, but every one of us have to face our own struggles first in order to get there. 
Think of anyone you like or admire in History.  Everyone of them faced their own struggles. 
Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther, Joan of Arc, King Arthur, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and even Benjamin Franklin.  That is just a very short list of people, yet every one of them had struggle as part of their individual stories.  I could go through the scriptures and find even more.  For every person there are struggles.  I am not ever going to say that I like them, I don't even always appreciate them.  But I am trying to look at them as an important part of who I am.  An essential part of what makes me the person I am becoming. 
When I think of the people I admire most, they have always gone through great trials and struggles.  Some are overwhelming to me.  I can't even imagine having to endure those things.  But that is why I remember them as great people.  They did great things in the midst of struggle. 
From the time I was very young, I have admired Harriet Tubman for all she did on the underground railroad.  I did school reports on her and read everything that I could find about her.  I read about the people she rescued and the times she was injured and nearly died for what she believed in.  I always wanted to be brave like her.  To put the needs or others above my own and to right the wrongs around me. 
In the scriptures, one of my favorite stories is of Abraham and Sarah.  How he laughed at God when God told him that his wife, Sarah, would conceive.  She was 90 years old and Abraham was 100, when she bore him a son.  She lived her life believing she was infertile.  Never knowing that she would actually hold her own baby in her arms.  I can't even imagine the strength that she must have had to face that.  But her struggle is also part of her story.  Her love for her husband and her son are written in the life that she lived. 
There are so many more examples.  Both men and women, living in the past and present.  So many struggles, heartache and so much love all wrapped into the years of a life. 
The struggles have always been a part of your story.