Thanks For That Lesson Mom

Recently my mom sent me an email of encouragement in my continuing pursuit of my Master's. I am currently working on my thesis, and it is proving a daunting task. Knowing this, Mom sent me an email of encouragement, telling me, "you can do anything that you can put your mind to." This was a particularly poignant email as I got some rough feed back and reality check from my major professor today prior to reading it. This news, combined with mom's email made me think of a lesson she inadvertently taught me during my youth while we were out on a hike. I wanted to share it with her and thank her in my email response.

"...It was nice of you to send this message of encouragement and wisdom, as it was timely. I had my meeting with my major professor today and he and I went over my methods and literature review section of my thesis. He began to tell me that I did not have enough breadth within my lit review and to expand. With my case studies as the meat of the thesis, how much could this be? I wasn't prepared for him to offer some examples of past theses, the shortest of which was 100 pages! If I follow the exhaustiveness for the subject matter which is sought by my major professor, it looks like my thesis will be 20-30 pages longer than my wife's doctoral dissertation; and I have three months to write it. Apparently he doesn't realize that I work full-time. Anyway, after coming to this realization of how much work I have ahead of me, I couldn't help but equate this thesis experience with our hike up Mt. Miguel (where we continuously hit crest after discouraging crest); just when I think I can move on to another phase in the project, I'm back to the drawing board and the mountain is suddenly larger than anticipated with each passing step.

"It's amazing how often climbing that mountain comes up as an allegory for life's issues. On our way down that day, I remember equating it to our family's recovery efforts, and the metaphor lives on to teach the lesson that diligence combined with hard work, prayer, and a little bit of insanity can often times get us to the top of the mountains which we face each day.

"Thank you for letting me accompany you that day to climb that mountain--it's proving to be one of the most important life lessons you've taught me."

Life can be hard. Thankfully, when I begin to feel discouraged, I look to the hills.