The Gift of Resilience
The journey to rising the occasion of your life is not one you must make alone. There is a magical gift available to every human being that serves as a powerful friend.
That gift is what we call resilience.
Once resilience is added to any part of life, amazing things happen. It’s not like vitamin C where you don’t notice its effects but trust that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. No, it’s potent. If you take resilience and add it into your marriage, you will notice a difference immediately. If a wildly talented but mentally fragile athlete is given an infusion of resilience, it will catapult their career to untold heights. If an addict in recovery fortifies his mind with resilience he will never use again.
Resilience has no prejudice. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like, where you’ve been in life, what your faith is, or whatever category you could possibly think of. God makes resilience accessible to every human spirit. It’s up to us whether we use it. And if we use it, it’s up to us what we use it for.
Some have used resilience to do beautiful things. All the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy displayed enormous amounts of resilience. Every cancer patient who battled, no matter the outcome, inspired their loved ones with the resilience to endure. And every mother endured the pains of childbirth with resilience to bring life to their beautiful little one.
Others have used resilience to do horrific things. The men needed to storm the beaches of Normandy precisely because of the horrific efforts of an extraordinarily resilient Nazi empire. Many lung cancer patients have the resilience of the tobacco industry to thank for the perpetuation of cigarettes. And every child who is murdered, raped, abused, or sold into slavery has known the resilience of its perpetrator.
Resilience is neutral. Gandhi was resilient. So was Hitler. Mother Teresa was resilient. So was Bin Laden. And so is every force oriented toward a particular direction with an intense dedication. Use it wisely. Use it knowing whatever direction you choose to take in life, if you choose to include the ingredient of resilience, you will bring great life or great death.
John Vianney once said, “A priest will go to heaven or hell and bring thousands with him.” The same is true for anyone who unleashes the magic of resilience in their life. They will go to heaven or hell and bring countless souls with them.
I met a woman once who personified resilience. Her name was Anita.
Anita lived the hard and hidden life of a wife and mother to a small-town country farmer. They were a family of simple means, with a simple creed of faith, family and hard work. Her personality matched that of a farming lifestyle. She was tough, no-nonsense, and tireless.
In her early forties, Anita buried her parents, her husband, and a young child within a few years of each other. Her husband was the last to go and when he died, she didn’t want to get out of bed. It was all too much. But she also knew, she was all the rest of her children had. There was no back-up plan. Either she kept the farm going, showed up for her children, and persevered or the whole thing would crumble. So, she got up, out of love for those who were under care and in honor of those who had passed and went to work.
No matter what she did, the immense loss she suffered was going to change her. That part was inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable, was how she chose to let it change her.
Anita held no political office or place of leadership. She spent her years of retirement doing all of the little things at her Church no one sees. Like turning the air conditioning on before Mass on Sunday and cleaning up after others when it was over. She didn’t have any particular gifts or talents that helped her stand out in a crowd and she was far from eloquent in her speech.
Yet, when she died, nearly the entire county showed up to pay tribute to her. They did it to “honor the woman whose resilience helped them through their darkest night.” The community laughed when the preacher pointed out that whenever anyone experienced something difficult, she would show up with pie. And they cried when he noted that her mere presence, after having endured so much in her own life, was enough to make them believe that they could get through it, whatever was in front of them, without disintegrating. Often, she was the only one who could go into the room of a parent who lost a child and give them the courage to get through the day.
The gift of resilience is not exclusive to Anita. God promises that gift to us all. All it takes to receive it is a willing heart and an open mind.
And here’s what will happen if you tap into resilience in your effort to rise to the occasion.
Your potential will be unlocked
It’s not enough to say that you are capable of carrying some load in life. It’s that you are actually incomplete as a person if you’re not carrying YOUR load resiliently. Meaning cannot be found by way of eliminating all burdens. It can be found, however, by choosing a load that is so worth carrying that the resilience required to carry it leads you to a depth of meaning that cannot be attained without it.
Your love will know no bounds
There are places only resilience can take your love. I’m talking here about the wife who can be found at the bedside of her ailing husband at all hours of the day redefining the term visiting hours. Or the neighbor who visits his lonely elderly neighbor each week just to check in on her. Or the child who forgives his father for stepping out on his mom decades ago. Resilience will take your love places you can hardly imagine possible.
You will bring good out of suffering
Imagine for a moment that you were the kind of person who could bring the maximum good out of the best and hardest moments of life. Imagine being the kind of person who, when something difficult comes about, everyone else turns to because they know you have the secret ingredient to make the most of it all.
If you doubt your own ability to be resilient, welcome to the club. But before you dismiss it as something not possible for you, do me a favor and remember who you are. You are a human being. And you come from a long line of astounding resilience. So call on them. Call on the spirit of resilience, ask the champions of the past to intercede on your behalf, be open to the possibility that you were made to join the storied ranks of men and women who rise to the occasion of their life.
If you still don’t believe me, try something once. Try acting like resilience is a voice that was placed within you long before you opened your eyes. And next time something difficult comes your way and you hear a loud voice in your head telling you to run as far from it all as possible, take a beat. Don’t run. Just wait. Strain the ears of your soul to listen to see if another voice will come. Wait to see if the quiet voice of resilience will speak up. You will know it by the quality of the tone. It will be strong enough and resolute enough to send shivers down your back. And it will say:
Hold on.
Steady.
We’re not done yet.
Be not afraid.
You were born to do this.
