Tougher than Expected

“These shutters are a lot more work than I expected,” I sigh. “Thanks for helping me.”

I agreed to paint shutters for a friend. Too late, I discovered they hadn’t been properly prepped before the previous owner covered them in enamel; it flaked off like autumn leaves but gummed up my sander. The only option was tedious scraping. 

Each slat. 

Both sides. 

The paint only held fast where edges met, the hardest part to clean…on every slat.

A five-hour job ballooned into a week-long project. The only saving grace? The lead paint test was negative. 

My ten year old son shrugs, scraping an edge.

“If they’re so hard, why don’t you just take them back and say you can’t do it?”

“Because I agreed to paint them. I didn’t say I’d only paint them if they were easy to prep.”

He flicks a piece of peeling paint. “But this is too hard. It’s not what you expected. You should give up. That’s what I’d do.”

After the week he had at school, I think maybe we aren’t talking about the shutters.

Watching black paint chips flutter to the ground like an apocalyptic snowfall, I shake my head.

“Nope. I said I’d paint them. I gave my word. That’s a promise, and I keep my promises.”

“But it’s too hard!” He shakes his little brass scraper in my direction.

“It’s not TOO hard. It’s difficult, yes, and more work than I expected, but I’m going to have a really good feeling when I’m done.

Often, when you work through something difficult, you find out that YOU are tougher than you expected yourself to be.

There will be lots of times in your life when things will seem harder than you expected, but when you finally have a great result, you’ll know the hard work was worth every moment.”

He pauses, thinking.

“That’s why you’ll never get rid of me, even when I’m bad?”

Exactly.