Perseverance

Every Thursday evening I attend a weekly ladies bible study at church.  

It's an hour spent diving into the word and it usually refreshes and renews my soul.

It's even better now with the extra daylight!

This past week's lesson was on Perseverance.  

It's a noun I'd never given much thought.

Perseverance is defined as steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. 

The interesting thing is that people who 'preservere' initially get divided into two categories in my mind.  

Those who choose to do so and those who don't have a choice.

I think about all those folks who persevere through the physical pain to reach a goal they thought unattainable at one point.  The ones who could never run a mile and then complete a 5k, 10k, half…marathon, ironman, triathlon, etc.  Or the kid who had such a difficult time learning in elementary school and persevered and graduated from college.  Or the athlete who was told they weren't good enough who persevered through the negative feedback and made it to play in college or the pros.
Those folks who continuously work hard towards a goal.  

And then I think about those folks who persevere by default.  Because life has handed them a challenging hand of cards.  Those people who get the cancer diagnosis and persevere through treatments and side effects.  The people born with a birth defect or disability who persevere through life's everyday challenges.  This is the category I lump us into.  

Now into our eighth year of our infertility journey, I guess you could say we've persevered.  Not because we chose to.  We happily would have never have learned this lesson in perseverance if we could have gotten pregnant naturally 8 years ago.  Despite our best efforts, it looks like our lesson in perseverance will continue.  Considering we let almost three years pass us by without trying to do anything to grow our family, it's hard to think we're any good at this whole 'perseverance' thing.  

But, what I have realized, is that I've become great at persevering through really difficult moments.  Individual snapshots in time…that slowly and collectively add up to give me strength to continue on.

Like the moment where I read or hear that 5 out of last year's 7 Race to Parenthood couples are currently expecting and I feel my face start to flush and the tears start deep down in my soul and they threaten to spill onto my face.  And I, somehow, by the Grace of God, keep it together.  Because I realize that to the outside world people are processing that 10 more people get to become parents.  But in my heart and my mind all I realize is that we are the one couple (the other couple essentially fell off the face of the earth), who didn't succeed.  Who still have to persevere on this darn journey. And I have to squelch the feeling of failure…again.

Or that moment where being part of this race makes you realize that people don't always live up to your expectations.  An event where there is so much joy can also come with incredible hurt.  But we persevere and focus on how the positive infinitely outweighs the negative.

Or those moments where I have to teach my heart to be compassionate towards people who have not been on this journey as long as us….instead choosing to be thankful that we still have time to end our infertility story.  And to realize that people who have been on this journey longer than us are probably thinking the same thing in regards to our timeline. 

But aren't we all always running our own form of a race?
There are no differing levels of perseverance.  
There's no group division.

We'll persevere through life's daily trivial snafus AND those difficult journeys with no end in sight.  

I am resilient.

You are resilient. 

We are resilient. 

We will all persevere together.

And Jesus has our back.

If He could...we can, too.  

Congratulations to all those who finished the Monument Avenue 10k today.  
What an amazing race to persevere through!!!