Try Harder

There it is again. Almost jumping off the page in that unmistakable aqua ink from a fountain pen. Making one more lash at the fragile ego inside. Forever etching itself into the soul. Every report card from first grade to sixth always had it on the back. What does a grade school principal of the sixties know about A.D.D or Asperger's?
How can she know that she is mutilating a round peg by pounding it into a square hole?
Chiseling away what God put on the round peg and leaving gaps where the square would have fill in.

Fifty years later it is still there, always there: "Try harder, Ruth" V. Demand.

Sweet Vera Demand. Oh she cared for the students of her school so very dearly. If only she knew the hurt she caused. Half a century of "trying harder", always trying harder and never achieving. Never getting anything right. Nothing good enough no matter how hard I try to do it right. Relationships, jobs, personal dreams all bare the scars of those few words.

Years of trying harder has left me numb. Without strength. Almost without hope.

And yet....
My hope is in my Lord.