When the Struggle Is the Path: Finding Purpose in Life's Hardest Seasons

Imagine that, for just a moment, everything comes to a halt.

There are no more thoughts about who is to blame. No searching for external causes. No attempts to explain why life isn't unfolding the way we wanted it to.

What remains is a single, simple realization: what is happening in our lives right now — even when it is painful, confusing, or seemingly senseless, is not the result of cruel fate or external forces working against us. According to the perspective of consciousness awareness, it is something much deeper. It is the expression of inner processes that began within us long ago, often without our awareness.

One person who writes extensively about this idea is Frank Wanderer, a psychologist and consciousness researcher who has spent years exploring human awareness. In his writings, he encourages people to free themselves from complete identification with their life story and limiting beliefs — thoughts such as, "I don't have enough self-confidence" or "This is just who I am." Instead, he invites us to discover what he calls the "miracle of consciousness" — the quiet, deeper dimension of human existence that is often overlooked.

What does that mean in practical terms?

It means that at every stage of life, we are capable of seeing things that we were not yet mature enough to understand in the past.

Old fears, behavioral patterns, defense mechanisms, and habits formed over many years continue to influence how we experience reality. Often, they prevent us from taking even the small steps we are capable of taking in order to move forward. The events we encounter today are frequently echoes of choices, beliefs, and perceptions that became rooted within us long ago.

Our lives — and everything within them, are reflections.

The Courage to Face Difficulty

Who among us is not struggling with something?

Life constantly presents us with situations, people, and challenges that reveal where we have drifted away from ourselves, where we have abandoned our inner truth, and where we have forgotten our connection to our deepest essence.

As Jews, perhaps the question becomes even more personal: Where is our heart?

What are we fighting for in the quiet battle taking place within us — a battle for which no one will ever declare a ceasefire?

Many of us assume that freedom means living without difficulties. Yet psychologists and consciousness researchers such as Wanderer suggest something very different. True freedom — the kind that cannot be taken away by circumstances, is not the absence of struggle. It is the ability to face struggle without running from it.

Consider anxiety, for example.

In today's reality, many people struggle with anxiety, uncertainty, and fear. For some, it shows up as difficulty meeting new people or even interacting with others in general. We often call it a lack of self-confidence, but it is usually much more than that.

The experience can feel as though the ground has been pulled out from beneath your feet. Skills that once felt natural suddenly seem inaccessible.

The first step is not to look for someone to blame. Nor is it to wage war against yourself.

We are not angels. We were not sent into this world to fix everything at once.

The first step is simply to stop, to observe, to feel, and to become present within the experience exactly as it is.

When you can say to yourself, "Part of my purpose right now is to experience this difficulty," something begins to shift. You stop fighting what cannot currently be changed. And you begin learning from it.

Sometimes the Struggle Is the Gate

Who doesn't go through hardship?

Give me a microphone, an audience, and willing ears, and I could tell countless stories about the struggles I have faced.

The struggle to understand who I am, to discover what I truly love, to hear what my soul is asking of me, to find my purpose.

For years, I fought with myself. Slowly, piece by piece, insight by insight, understanding emerged. Nothing came easily.

But today I understand something I could not see then: The struggle itself was the gate.

It was the doorway through which I found my way back to myself — the more mature, reflective, compassionate, and resilient version of who I was meant to become.

It became the doorway through which I learned to pray for the roles I hoped to fulfill and for the story I wanted to tell in this world.

My story still passes through struggle.

In truth, it continues right up to this very moment. To this very breath. To the next word I write.

Despite the battles I have fought, the victories I have won, the failures I have endured, and the stages I have crossed, I know I have not yet arrived.

There is still another calling waiting for me, and I am only beginning to understand what it is.

But the gate leading there has not fully opened yet. There are still inner struggles that refuse to move aside. And surprisingly, that no longer saddens me the way it once did.

For now, I devote myself to what seems to be my current mission: writing and helping others.

And that, in itself, is something profound. 

To be present in this moment, to accept God's will even when it differs from my own, and to allow change to happen quietly.

Without noise, without dramatic breakthroughs, and without headlines.

From Victimhood to Gratitude

One of the most meaningful lessons I have drawn from Wanderer's work is the transition from a victim mindset to a mindset of observation and gratitude.

When we stop asking, "Why is this happening to me?" and begin asking, "What is this teaching me?" something changes within us.

A new space opens.

A space filled with acceptance, clarity, and peace.

And from that place, meaningful change becomes much easier.

We become more than observers of our lives; we become fully present within them.

And from that presence, gratitude naturally follows. After gratitude comes something even deeper: remembrance. A remembrance of who we are beyond our fears, beyond our circumstances, beyond the stories others tell about us, beyond the limits the world taught us to place on ourselves, beyond what I believed I was capable of becoming.

And perhaps that is the point.

Perhaps the greatest gate in our lives is not the one that leads inward, but the one that leads us toward other people.

Because it is often through serving others, understanding others, and easing the pain of others that we finally discover who we are.

The Purpose Hidden Inside the Pain

As I grow older, I understand that my struggles were never meant solely for me.

My years of prolonged singleness, which I wrote about through tears in articles and reflections, eventually became a book that has strengthened countless single women.

At the time, I had so many questions.

So many unfulfilled desires.

So many prayers that seemed to disappear into a void of unanswered longing.

Then came marriage.

And after marriage, five years of waiting for children.

So much difficulty.

So much uncertainty.

So many prayers.

But today I understand that those hardships were chapters, not the entire story.

They were the raw materials from which my ability to understand another heart was built. They taught me how to hold someone else's pain. They gave me words that could bring light into someone else's darkness.

I No Longer Ask When the Next Gate Will Open

Today, I no longer spend my time asking when the next gate will open.

Instead, I walk, I write, I pray, I give thanks.

And I do my best to remain faithful to the mission I have been given in this moment.

Precisely in this struggle.

Precisely while I am still searching.

Precisely before everything is figured out.

Precisely before all the dreams have been fulfilled.

Precisely before I have fully become everything I hope to be.

Because perhaps the journey itself is not an obstacle to the destination. Perhaps it is part of the destination.

And perhaps every challenge, every delay, every unanswered question, and every closed gate is quietly leading us toward the person we were always meant to become.