Day 23: Perseverance

Today's work in parenting toward Jesus was a simple lesson for myself - in perseverance. I think perseverance is a crucial part of the character of Christ. When we look at him showing up on earth, with a purpose, and carrying it out to the end no matter what that took, there's really no comparison. No other human to ever walk the earth could have seen what stood ahead of him and decided willingly - as a volunteer, not a victim - to dive in and keep going. He persevered through persecution, through disbelief, through betrayal, through desperation and fear. He persevered and even went to the lengths of the cross, the most torturous death in all human history, to take our death penalty for walking away from life with God the way we were created for and ending up lost, dying, and distant. Nothing stopped him, nothing held him back.

I wish I could say my perseverance imitated Christ's. That I always kept going, kept trying, no matter what. As I've shared here, one of the things I focus a lot on is consistency, and I believe consistency and faithfulness are pretty big ingredients to perseverance. I might add in motivation, hope, and sheer determination if I were to create a recipe.

But some days, my ability to persevere seems to wane. I lose motivation or energy. I run out of determination or hope.

And I find it's on a day-to-day basis that it happens the most. The big projects, the important ones, the big goals, you name it - those I can persevere for. But the smaller, mundane, trivial tasks that just simply need to be done are the ones that get me.

Today I had a great example of that and could really see my struggles with perseverance come out. I have one of those cool vertical gardens that you can keep indoors over the winter to grow vegetables. And this winter, I found out there was a way to hook a hose up to my bathroom sink to water it, instead of having to carry pitchers of water back and forth to the basin on the bottom of it (it's huge so this could take all day).

So I decided to order the sink attachment. It wasn't as easy as it sounds, and researching and selecting which one took time. If I'm brutally honest, I was proud of myself for getting this step done, and done well, and thought it should be a piece of cake from here.

But then it arrived.

And it wasn't easy.

No cake came with it.

It just didn't seem to fit, or to work.

The instructions said there might be a grate on the bottom of my faucet, so I checked that. No luck.

Then I realized that there was still a piece of my faucet that needed to be unscrewed in order to screw the hose on. Maybe it would be that simple?

But the piece was stuck. I couldn't get it to budge with my hands. Pliers or a wrench wouldn't fit to help.

I gave up.

That actually sounds pretty perseverant up to that point, right? I was sure trying! I tried multiple steps, multiple things! I felt like I had done plenty - like that should have been enough to accomplish this simple task and get me there. I gave up.

But what I can see now is that I was just one step away from actually solving it, from getting all the way there.

You see, downstairs, in the drawer next to my stove, I have one of those rubber gripper towels that can open just about anything. And a few hours later I had a fleeting thought of "what if that solved this whole thing?"

And it did. The gripper allowed me to remove the piece from the faucet so the hose could be attached. And the sense of accomplishment was unbelievable! It was such a simple thing, but going from that feeling of stuck and stalled out to a feeling of "I did it even though it was hard!" was truly joy-giving!

I want my daughter to experience perseverance in the "I did it even though it was hard!" kind of way. She went skiing this past weekend and had her first real experience with something like that. Where it seemed like it might be too hard to do but the more she tried, the closer she got to getting it, until it finally all clicked and she was going down the hill! She was so excited!

I want her to keep trying and not give up her whole life. To feel the exhilaration of victory (as General George S. Patton calls it) that comes from not giving up. I love the trait of perseverance that Jesus demonstrates to us. And I know the way for that concept to be embedded in her heart and her being is for me to show it too. In big life challenges and in small ones, like hooking a hose up for my garden. She's watching, and I want to model it. Going to work on that more today!