The Struggle Is Real

“It just shouldn’t be this hard!”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a day where everything that could go wrong does go wrong—you lock your keys in the car while it’s running, lose control with your kids, make a mistake at the office that results in hours more work. And just when you think not one more thing could possibly happen… well, fill in the blank.

The struggle is real, friends. It may not be major stuff. Lives are not on the line here. But it makes us feel awful… and then we feel guilty for stressing when other people have “real” problems that are so much more serious.

Yet the fact remains: we live in a world that often feels harder than we think it should be. And so it can be easy to believe the stories we tell ourselves—that we’re doing it wrong, that we’ll be stuck in this place forever, that God doesn’t love us. We struggle to practice gratitude, to make godly choices, and to live our daily lives with confidence and contentment. So what can we do?

Join popular Bible teacher and counselor Nicole Unice to discover why the struggle is real… and what to do about it. Nicole offers practical tools to help you navigate the daily ups and downs, and ways to rewrite your struggle into a new, God-centered life story. The Struggle Is Real is an invitation to take the hard, hurtful, and confusing moments and turn them into opportunities to grow in wisdom, strength, and joy.

1. Opening
2. Introduction
3. Part 1
4. Chapter 1
5. The Struggle Solution
6. True Reality
7. A Baseline Test
8. The Good Life Inventory
9. Where We Begin
10. Opening Your Heart Is A Choice
11. A Story Of Choice
12. Keeping It Real
13. Chapter 2
14. Choosing Real Reality
15. But It Will Be Hard
16. Home Base
17. Keeping It Real
18. Chapter 3
19. Defining Moments
20. Finding Our Story
21. Two Dudes And A Wise Woman
22. Truth Number 1
23. Truth Number 2
24. Truth Number 3
25. Keeping It Real
26. Chapter 4
27. Wisdom At Work
28. Summarizing The Original Plot
29. A New Story
30. Good Desperation
31. The Unveiled Story
32. Keeping It Real
33. Chapter 5
34. The New Story
35. Story Theme 1
36. Story Theme 2
37. Story Theme 3
38. Story Theme 4
39. The New Storyline
40. Keeping It Real
41. Part 2
42. Chapter 6
43. The Freedom Cycle
44. Love
45. Truth
46. Forgiveness
47. Freedom
48. Derailers
49. Keeping It Real
50. Chapter 7
51. Hearing God - The Why
52. Hearing God - The How
53. Hearing God - The What
54. Hearing God - But When
55. Keeping It Real
56. Chapter 8
57. Beginnings
58. Reality Check 1
59. Reality Check 2
60. Reality Check 3
61. Reality Check 4
62. There's Always A Pattern
63. Potential Dysfunctional Sin Patterns
64. A New Family
65. A New Perspective
66. A New Vision Of Health
67. Keeping It Real
68. Chapter 9
69. The Word On Words
70. Rewriting Our Relationship With God
71. Ten Verses On Who God Actually Is
72. Rewriting Our Relationship With Ourselves
73. Rewriting Our Relationships With Others
74. Humility
75. Sincerity
76. Grace
77. Rewriting Our Relationship With The World
78. Keeping It Real
79. Chapter 10
80. Unfinished Business
81. Brianna's Story
82. Lisa's Story
83. The Greatest Grief
84. Tommy's Story
85. Living In The Gray
86. Keeping It Real
87. Conclusion