Resilience
Our children are not our children. They are the sons and daughters of God’s longing for love. We may give our children our wisdom but not our possessions because they must earn their own way. We may house their bodies but not their soul, for their souls dwell in the mansions of the future, which we cannot know. We are the bows from which our children as living arrows fly. We bend our bow with gladness and might so that the arrows we love may go swift and far.
Almost twenty years ago, I took a walk with my 7-year-old granddaughter, Lori. Instead of taking the park’s high and wide trail, we took a winding path through the woods. Tall trees hung over the narrow, chameleon-like trail. A compact surface would become sandy, then mucky, then muddy, then compact again. At times, tall weeds overgrew the trail; occasionally, we had to walk around brambles or debris washed up by a recent flood.
Having just watched the DVD of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, an enchanting fantasy for children aged seven to 97, we imagined we were in the fire swamp looking for R.O.U.S.s (rodents of unusual size). We searched for the Shrieking Eels where leaves flowed through the widened creek. We thought a small hole along the path might lead to the Pit of Despair.
We crawled under a huge tree that had fallen over the trail, reversed our path, climbed onto the trunk, and sat with our feet dangling. We looked for the pursuing ships of evil Prince Humperdinck on a pond almost hidden by the trees. We slid down a steep creek bank, and as I was about to swing Lori over the water to the other side, she scrambled back up, screaming, “Snake! Snake!”
With encouragement, Lori flowed down into my arms, and I swung her to the other side and, laughing, we quickly crawled up the other bank looking over our shoulders for the snake… or a Shrieking Eel. Later, Lori asked, “Why aren’t there other people on this trail?”
I told her that most people take the easy road, but when they do, they miss a lot of adventure. The easy way is boring. Those who take the wide path don’t get to see a tree trunk across the trail or a pond in the woods or slide down an embankment or see a snake or swing across the creek. Lori reached for my hand. I picked her up and carried her home.
In a nanosecond, Lori follows her own path now. Sometimes, she meets success, unexpected in the common hour, at others her way is rocky, filled with brambles and misfortunes, but she keeps moving.
As children, we are told stories of hardiness that often come with tidy, hopeful endings—tales where pain has a purpose and every storm gives way to a bright skyline. Adulthood tends to strip away these comforting illusions, teaching us that survival is rarely poetic. We discover that life involves showing up when we’d rather run away, smiling through pain that goes unnoticed, and continuing onward when the winding path seems hostile and unforgiving.
Perseverance is the quiet miracle of being human. When life is relentless and hope feels distant, we stumble, we break, and we fall to our knees, but somehow, we struggle back up. When we learn to comfort ourselves in the ways we wish others would, we uncover a strength we never knew we possessed.
Resilience comes from that sweet, soft whisper urging us onward. Every small step forward defeats the darkness that tries to consume us. That quiet boldness—choosing to endure, to seek, to hope—is the bravest thing we can do.
Drawings taped to the refrigerator fade; noise of scrambling feet on the stairs hush; echoes of laughter grow faint, but memories remain, and the children’s children with fresh drawings appear, footsteps sound on the stairs once more, laughter reverberates through the house again. Loss and gain flow through our lives, locking each loving moment in our hearts. Love is not a bond that restrains but instead is a moving sea rising and falling through time.
