““Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!””
Several years ago I decided that I wanted to build a very small retaining wall (literally about four feet wide by three feet high) to prevent some water and dirt that was being washed down the slope of my yard from going into the door of my basement. The current solution was a bunch of rocks piled together, and I decided that I could make it look nicer by removing those rocks and making a nice little wall. Plus my wife was out of town, so I had some time to kill.
To make it even more appealing, there used to be a retaining wall behind the playground at the church next door. Unfortunately, the retaining wall itself had collapsed into the ravine that was behind both the building and my house. My first thought was, "free bricks!" I asked around and was told I could use them, as long as I could get them out of the ravine. No problem there, I thought.
I started the project with gusto, digging out the area where the bricks would go, moving the dirt to other places in the yard or putting it in the ravine, as necessary. Finally, it was time to start carrying up bricks.
Down into the ravine I went.
I grabbed the first brick that looked easiest to carry out, and I realized that it was far heavier than I had anticipated. This was going to be a one-brick-at-a-time process. I had to grab the brick, walk precariously up the incline along the edge of the ravine, and then carry it across the parking lot that separated the ravine from my house. Eventually I wised up and used my children's wagon for the last part–but it was only marginally helpful relative to the whole task of picking the bricks and getting them to the wall.
I remember standing there, looking at the half-a-wall I had built, sweating in the sun, and thinking to myself, "this was a big mistake. I'm going to die in that ravine, and there will be no one here to hear me scream."
The problem with being halfway through a project is that you've already put too much work in to go backwards; but you know exactly how much work is required to finish the job. You feel like giving up. The end and the beginning are equally as close. You're like the Israelites in the wilderness, thinking, "why didn't we just stay in Egypt?" It's discouraging.
Thinking about that story reminded me of this verse from Nehemiah. Nehemiah goes back to his hometown of Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls. He has the backing of the King, but it's a big job. The King's resources that have been given to him aren't going to be enough to build a completely new wall, so he'll need to rebuild using the crumbled pieces of the old wall that are laying on the ground. The wall starts out as a salvage project; how much of this rubble is still useful? To make matters worse, he is using mostly unskilled laborers to do the project. They work hard, they want to get the job done, but it's beyond most of their skill set.
As their half-way through the wall, most of it still lying crumbled on the ground, the laborers, resting on their tools, wondering what they got themselves into, the antagonist of the story shows up. He's sitting on his horse, riding around the wall, looking down on them as they are sweating and starts laughing. "This wall stinks!", he says. "Even a little tiny fox could break this wall down!"
In that moment, that's probably how they felt. That's how everyone feels mid-way through a project. "This was so dumb. I'm never going to finish. I can't do it. I should have been done by now. What was I thinking anyway?"
And inevitably, that's when someone pops up and starts telling you the same lies. "You know, you could just give up if you really wanted to."
But don't.
No one has ever gotten any medals for a half-finished race. No one has ever been proud to have done a job half-way. No one has looked back on their life and been glad that they quit when things were half done.
The middle of the project is the worst place to be. But it's also the moment when you start to see the biggest gains. It's the moment when your wall starts coming together. When your antagonists and people who want you to stop start thinking to themselves, "uh oh, they might just get this thing done after all".
And then, before you know it, you're done.