Those bright spots in your life, the memories that you look back on over and over again, they don’t come out of nothing. They usually come out of investing time and energy when it’s inconvenient, when it’s hard, when it’s painful.

Tonight we made some of those types of memories. It was below freezing and after midnight, so we went outside as a family for 15 minutes to watch the Geminid meteor shower.

Despite many desires and quite a few tries, I’ve only seen meteors once before in my life, and that wasn’t until shortly before I became a parent. Now about 15 years later, I got to see them again. When my older child didn’t want to come out to watch for meteors because they had never successfully seen meteors, I had to explain to them that I certainly hadn’t at their age either, but if you don’t try, you won’t succeed.

In our 15 minutes, we each saw multiple meteors, sometimes the same ones, sometimes different ones, but they were all cool and exclaimed over. My kid who had never seen one has now seen infinitely more than if they’d stayed inside.

Tonight we’re all cold, and our necks are sore. Tomorrow we’ll all be tired. But when the moon (a moonless night), weather (cloudless skies) and the timing (midnight instead of 2 am) was a great combination tonight, we did it anyway, and it was worth it.

What are you doing that’s hard but worth it?