Perseverance

He is working crazy hours out of town all week and decides to make sure to fit in a few workouts.  My husband has perseverance.  Not just with working out.  I see it modeled in his work ethic, the way he disciplines our children, and how he handles me.  Me - the wife who has been less than ideal - especially in the last 10 months when our world was tossed into turmoil because of a serious case of postpartum depression, dropping our 10-week-old, and other "things" that shall remain unnamed. 

Perseverance.

Paul had it, too.  In one of my favorite Bible passages (Philippians 3:12-14) he writes:

12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself  to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus

Paul wrote the above in prison, no less.  That is the true definition of perseverance.

Perseverance.

I want it.  I need it.  Yet, I don't always like it.  A quick Google search defines perseverance as "steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success."

See, here's the thing...if perseverance just required digging in my heels when times got tough, I would have no issues.  I can do that.  The problem is perseverance requires patience.  Patience is not always my friend.  It's certainly not my strongest virtue.  Yet, God is REALLY determined to make me practice it...over and over again.

I was recently at my wit's end due to my inability to just snap my fingers and change.  A godly woman reminded me that it's OK for everything to not be perfect.  As she told me, it's OK to "live in a state of grace between success and failure."  That right there is a game changer.

So, I will persevere when my husband is out of town and all three kids come down with a different illness (true story), when I can't "will" myself into not allowing my emotions to get the best of me, when I have to look at my child and apologize for "fussing" over something silly, and when I have to seek forgiveness from my Father for focusing on myself way more than Him.

Perseverance mixed with His grace...that I can do.