Quotes about Struggles

"Don't worry too much about how spiritually poor you are_God sees that,but for you it is expected to trust in God and pray to Him as best you can,never to fall into despair and to struggle according to your strength.If you ever begin to think you are spiritually_"well off"_then you can know for sure that you aren't!True spiritual life,even on the most elementary level,is always accompanied by suffering and difficulties.Therefore you should rejoice in all your difficulties and sorrows."

Father Seraphim Rose

"At the beginning of the call to the spiritual life,the Lord visits a person with His grace and various consolations,but afterwards He withdraws them and casts him into the fire of diverse temptations and sorrows,so that our self-loving and glory-loving disposition would be commpletely reduced to ashes by the fire of temptation,and would not trust in itself and its works but in the mercy and love of God.Humility is a great blessing."

From Living without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Council from the  Elders of Optina http://www.skete.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1483

"Happiness or sorrow- whatever befalls you, walk on untouched, unattached."

"Play as if it was your last game"

I am sorry if my own humanity and and pain and struggles to do the right thing are proof to you of something wrong or weak in me.

The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity.  We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.