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Today is Five Minute Friday, a challenge for bloggers to write for five minutes about a given topic. Today’s subject is slow, so here I am, typing fast for five minutes!

Sometimes our progress in life seems so slow.

My five-year-old, adopted 10 months ago from China, has been in speech therapy since September. She is talking so much more and so much clearer than she did at first, but sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated when the week-to-week progress seems so slow.

My oldest two children are both teenagers. They were born fourteen months apart and everyone said, “Oh, they will be so close when they get older.”

I’m still waiting. The constant bickering wears on me. The progress toward “close” seems so slow.

I struggle with my temper.

I study God’s Word, pray, read Christian books, and resolved to do better, yell less, and be more patient. I get so frustrated with myself because the progress seems so slow.

This week part of one of my daughter’s homeschool assignments included a retelling of part of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” We all know “slow and steady wins the race.” Quitting can be tempting when progress seems so slow, but when we look back and see how far God has brought us, we can have the determination to keep on going.

Spiritual growth, especially, takes time.

I may not be “growing like a weed,” but I am growing. And when my children get discouraged with slow progress, I want them to remember that we are striving to run with endurance in the race God has set before us.

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1

For more about Five-Minute-Friday, or to link up, see Kate Motaung’s blog.