Rest at the End, Never in the Middle
You don’t stop because you’re tired. You stop because you’re done.
The Art of Becoming is about turning obstacles into opportunities. Drawing from philosophy, resilience, and real-life experiences, I share lessons on navigating adversity, cultivating wisdom, and living with purpose. Because in the end, life isn’t about avoiding hardship—it’s about becoming someone who thrives in it.
We won’t always have the answers, but we can search for them together.
Today, we learn about grace and when we can rest.
I hope you’ll join me.
As I wrote in last Friday’s post, You Are Not Too Broken to Fight, I have been walking the Camino de Santiago, an 800-kilometer pilgrimage through Spain, with my daughters.
We passed the halfway point a couple of days ago. Everyone is tired. Our feet are blistered, our backs ache, and our faces are sunburnt. And if I’m honest, we’re a tad tired of each other.
These last two weeks have been a social experiment in love and how much my children tolerate me. My hope is more than it was before we started.
We’ve embraced the test that comes from the Camino—to face each day’s struggle and endure it with grace.
The thing with grace is that you have to meet it, not halfway, but where it stands. Whether you find grace at home, on the Camino, in the hospital, or stuck in traffic on the 91 going to Riverside on a late Friday afternoon, grace doesn’t meet you where you are, but when you need it.
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. — Anne Lamott
With each Camino I walk—this is my fifth—I learn something new or am reminded of a past lesson I forgot. The other day, I recalled an old lesson as I walked by a couple discussing whether to stop and go home. They couldn’t take the blisters and the constant drudgery of walking. They were barely halfway through their Camino, and they wanted to quit.
And then I saw my daughter Misha walk by. The image of her on a hospital bed, bald, weighing 78 pounds, came to me. She had undergone twenty months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, and a few surgeries. Not once during that time did she consider quitting.
The Camino is a pilgrimage we choose to walk. You can stop and go home. Nothing bad will happen. You can’t go home with Stage IV cancer unless you go home to die.
But that is like most of life, we are given the option to go home, with no penalty, just the memory that we quit.
If you’re like Misha, quitting isn’t a choice. For her, and many cancer survivors, she will only stop when she’s done.
I once asked Misha to stop her treatment. This is (part of) her story.
Let’s get to it.
My daughter, Misha, had just turned twenty-one and was a little more than halfway through two years of chemotherapy. A couple of months prior, she had finished six weeks of radiotherapy.
Her body was worn and beaten up. She went from weighing 110 pounds to 78, and life’s little tasks were becoming more difficult for her to complete. She could barely walk up the stairs to her bedroom.
To me, Misha was more than tired. I believed the chemo was killing her.
She had stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma, with twelve tumors that popped up throughout her body. To fight the cancer and its aggressive nature, her doctors put her on a 53-week regimen of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiotherapy. Depending on the session, there were 3-5 chemotherapeutic agents at any given time.
The cancer was violent and determined, but her treatment was more so.
It was a Monday, and we were heading out for Misha to start that week’s round of chemotherapy. She looked haggard and struggled to put on her shoes.
“I’m going to call Dr. Park and ask him to give you a week off,” I said. “I think you need a break.”
“No,” Misha replied, looking annoyed. “A week off means I’ll be going back to school a week later or more. No. I don’t want to stop.” She continued tying her shoes.
“College will always be there. You need time to rest and recover.”
“I can rest when I’m done, Dad.”
Misha stood up and walked out the door to the car. Three months later, she took a week off because her counts were too low. It was the only time I heard her curse.
I read that Kobe Bryant’s high school basketball coach would tell him and the rest of the team during practice that they could rest at the end, but never in the middle.
For Kobe, training wasn’t over until he said it was. He rested when the game was over, when the season was done, and when he retired.
Most people want to rest during the middle of a workout, take a break from training before they run their first marathon, or stop their diet when they lose five pounds instead of the thirty pounds the doctor told them to lose.
They could do more, but the little pain they’re going through is massive in their minds.
Most people aren’t like Misha and Kobe. They don’t know real pain and quit before the end.
The next time you want to take a break or give up because you’re tired or it’s too hard, think about Misha or Kobe.
Rest at the end, never in the middle.
The way it’s supposed to end
On Misha’s last day of chemo, all the nurses and doctors stood and clapped as she left the infusion center. Four months later, she went back to Smith College.
Misha’s journey isn’t over. She still struggles from the effects of the cancer and the chemotherapy. Her pain never left. Even with a degree from one of the top colleges in the country, Smith College, employers only see her disabilities and not her abilities.
But here’s the thing. Misha hasn’t stopped. She still fights and chooses to rest at the end.
Compared to Misha and the ocean of cancer survivors and victims, I have never suffered. There is no way I can ever rest or give up. It would insult their memory.
What about you?
Thanks for reading. You can rest when you’re done.
Love to you and yours,
Michael