This past week I got to visit my beautiful friend Holly and her adorable son Carson. He was bright-eyed, hungry and like any other 15-week-old baby I had met. Holly, as a mother, was just as I expected her to be- warm, calm, attentive and devoted. She was a natural, obviously.

Their journey together though was unlike most birth stories I knew. Carson was born seven weeks early, and while a premature arrival like that is manageable, it was not the story Holly and her husband had anticipated. Holly recalled thinking at one point that this was all too much for her to handle, that she wasn’t strong enough and that God had given her more than what she was capable of.

“I asked myself, ‘How am I going to get through this?’ And…you just do. You’re capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for.”

How do we get through something that seems so difficult? That is totally unknown and foreign to us? When the path isn’t clear? We just trudge on. We just keep moving, we just do it. Perhaps the answers aren’t there, perhaps the reasons are unclear, but we just keep going. Maybe we don’t know how it will end, maybe we don’t want it to end the way it’s heading, but we still Just. Keep. Going.

I never doubted her strength; I always saw it. I knew that she would push on and do whatever was needed for her son. Yet it’s easier to see it in others than to recognize it in our selves. If only we could love and support ourselves the way we do for our friends, we would be far better off. But when we can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel, when we can’t imagine going any further, it sure is great to have friends who believe in us.

WTF are you capable of?