resilient

Few parents would argue that raising kids changes your life. 

I am student to each one of my sons. The lessons continue unfolding daily. But today I am thinking of Joshua. He is seen pictured above eating breakfast on his 12th birthday. Yes, it's birthday cake.

As I muse what Joshua is teaching me, I can sum it up in one word. 

Resilience. 

It’s a $50 word that simply means the ability to endure even thrive. Academics in social work and psychology write 5,000 word papers describing and dissecting what makes one child survive while others seem to whither in the face of hardship. 

At 45 with peri-menopause, joint pain and faltering memory already pressing in on all sides, I don’t feel so resilient. Yet, as I study the topic, I am reminded of how God has used trials to mold me, shape me and change me. 

I learned to believe that because I desire it so earnestly for my children. I am desperate to believe the trials they face will be used for good by God. If I don’t believe that for myself, I cannot truly believe it for them. 

Often it is our hopes for our children that force us to look at our own crushed dreams. And as we give space to grieving those dreams, God moves in and re-frames our traumas. Our children more than any others usher us into the throne room. There we are invited to worship in God’s Presence. It is impossible to remain unaffected. 

“Resilient people do have emotional and psychological scars that they carry from their experience. They indeed struggle, but they keep going, staying engaged with life and continue to function as a part of the world. Resilience is not the ability to escape unharmed. It is the ability to thrive in spite of the odds” Tian Dayton, Ph.D. in Emotional Sobriety

33. 12 years of Joshua