Stickwithitness

Withitness. It’s a term used in the teaching profession to describe a teacher who has that quality of being able to always know what’s going on in the classroom. She’s not some mindless zombie in the front of the room, teaching with her back turned to the class and oblivious to her surroundings—to the kids talking in the back corner, to the student on row two with his cell phone behind his binder, to the one asleep on his backpack. (I’ve come a long way in this area since my first year of teaching, by the way.)

The first time I heard the term, I thought my graduate school professor had made it up, but as I continued my career and education in teaching, I learned that it is a real, universally recognizable term within the educational world. As an English teacher with a love for words, I coined a similar term—stickwithitness.

“Stickwithitness”—it’s a quality that’s waning in our culture. It’s a quality I’ve not always had. It’s a quality that God is growing in me. So what is it?

The Erica Osborne Dictionary definition: Stickwithitness [stik-with-it-nes] noun. 1. The quality of commitment to a cause, even in great difficulty. 2. The ability to keep going even when you don’t feel all the warm and fuzzies. 3. The vision to see how the path with the bumps will bring you victory at the end of the race. Synonyms: endurance, perseverance, steadfastness, dedication, continuance, stamina, grit, fortitude. Antonyms: fleetingness, indolence, discontentment.

Like I said before, sticking with something has not always been an area of strength for me. I felt like I had resolve for the things that counted—commitment to God, my marriage, and my kids. But everything else was fair game in my mind. If I didn’t like something, why not change it? The outdated paint color on the walls. The stagnant position of the furniture. My bland hair color. Where I live. My job. In part, I blame this on my creative personality. Maybe this is just how God wired me—to constantly think and dream and rearrange. I’ve always had a sense of adventure imbedded in my soul—a fearlessness in trying new things. In college, my plan was to move from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to New York City. Without a second thought, I hopped on a plane and went for two internship interviews in the Big Apple. When Gary asked where I would want to live after he graduated from law school, I said, “Sure, I’ll move somewhere different.” In my early career in advertising, if I was unhappy with a career position, I changed it. I’ve moved from a career in advertising to homeschooling my daughter to now teaching middle and high school English. I would build a house and sell it if it were up to me. But this thought keeps stirring: When does constant desire for change become sinful discontentment? That is the question. I wrestle with my restlessness.

In searching scripture, I cannot help but see the pattern of a God who values longsuffering and the benefits that come from keeping someone in the same place for a time. He had no qualm about letting the Israelites wander aimlessly in the desert for forty years. He allowed his own followers to be imprisoned in His name. He Himself waits long and patiently for as many to come to repentance as possible. This quality in scripture of being longsuffering produced many results: it brought sinners to repentance, it ignited the message of the gospel, and it molded God’s sons and daughters to resemble Him more fully. There is nothing like being in a situation in which you do not want to be, and especially one in which you feel powerless, to bring about an uncomfortable degree of heart change and a more gripping pursuit of relationship with God.

One tool that God has used to mature me over the years in this area is my husband. While I love and thrive on change, he hates it. Once a piece of furniture has been in the same spot for more than a day, to him, to move it is heresy. He will ride a train until it runs off the tracks. He appreciates routine, day in and day out. And because of this, we clash in many areas. Sometimes I just want to bang my head against a wall in battling his certitude and opposition to change. But he has been an incredible accountability partner in not letting me walk away from commitments—even when circumstances were dire and quitting would have been easy and even understandable. Most recently, the past three years of working through graduate school while teaching four different grades at the same time produced many moments of, “Is this even worth it, God?” Many late nights of work and tears in trying to balance doing a good job with being a present mom and wife pushed me to my limits. Quitting most definitely crossed my mind. But Gary encouraged me to stay. And I implored God for wisdom and guidance in the situation. Ultimately, I continued and finished grad school, and now I am teaching and influencing my own daughter and her friends in my sixth grade English class. Had I quit, I would not be in this rewarding position.

In my younger years, I would not have even asked God for His input. I would have acted based on my own fickle feelings. Sometimes in having the “stickwithitness” to walk through a place of wilderness and ask God for His will, he will in turn give you the will and strength to keep going through the hard time. And in turn, he will tinker with your character, producing a steadfastness that was not there before.

Yes, sometimes He does call us or release us to move on to new things that are in accordance with scripture. But in this ever-changing culture that says to move on when you’re not happy, we need believers who will pursue God over the next enticing thing—who will be willing to stick with what He has put before them, who will allow scripture to speak louder than an inner misguided voice. We need believers who will, instead of changing marriages, allow God to change their hearts. We need believers who will weigh the weight and value of all they’ve invested in a work to ask God for His heart before they easily walk away. Sometimes He may say give us clearance and peace in making a change. But other times He may use the many ways he speaks to us—His Word, wise counsel from other Godly people, or a sense of internal unrest about an idea or detriment to unity in relationships—to keep us on the same path.

Sometimes the change you may be craving is actually a change within yourself and not that of your surroundings.

The Sweetness of Pain

The sweetest year that I ever spent with God was the one after I ended a four-year dating relationship that I felt He was ultimately calling me to end. The person with whom I had spent most of my time was then gone from my life, and I was left to rebuild. I had nothing but God, and in turn I had everything.

I remember nights where I would lie in bed unable to sleep, God keeping me awake, until I would speak to Him. Both prayers soft and shallow to those deep and buried ensued. Just communion. Reconnecting with my Creator. In my solace and sorrow, I began meditating on scripture like never before. Words from David’s Psalm 103 in which he recounts his own restoration, “…redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,” still ring sweet echoes in my mind. I realigned my thinking with His thinking and made my desires His desires. I put myself out there. Where I had been uncommitted with our church college group, I invested and became mission minded. I shed my somewhat shy persona for one of boldness in meeting new people and bringing them into Christ-filled community.

God and I have walked through a host of other difficulties together—years of bitterness in marriage, miscarriage of a child followed by waiting to conceive, depression, the strain of a rigorous and busy graduate school and work life combination. And He’s been there in the highs as well—the provision of a Godly husband, the gift of our two children, the slow and steady sanctification of myself and my marriage, the laughter and joy experienced with friends.

And while He’s always been there, I’ve always looked back to that sweet year with a reminiscent longing for that time when I felt a sudden desperation to be with Him—a supernatural craving for his presence and an attuning to His voice. There was something about the pain and solitude that woke me up—got my attention. C.S. Lewis writes, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to a deaf world.” So did I wish for heartache? By no means. But I wanted to relish Him again. I wanted to experience God in a way that only pain can prod and provoke.

And I am there now—in the midst of the sting and the sweetness all wrapped in one. In the middle of pain. But in the palm of His hand. I can hear Him clearly. I can see His workings.

Whether because of sin, mere circumstance, divine provision, or some combination of the three, all the pieces of my life have been shaken like dice and thrown across the game board, some falling over the edge. There has been a continual stripping away, leaving me questioning, “What is left? When will things go back to normal? When will there be healing?”

Pain is a deafening silence that causes you to finally listen. A smelling salt to revive the faint. It makes you wake up and look around, the room still spinning but the objects becoming clearer. You see those things you’ve missed—maybe those people you’ve missed.

I have felt that I have nothing. But wait, I have everything. I have the very thing I crave, the very being that I’ve had but that I’ve missed in the noise.

True, I’ve seen Him in comfortable friendships. And sometimes I just want Jesus with some familiar skin on Him. But he’s revealing Himself in new skin. Lunch with a new friend. A beach trip with a group of girls that I may have overlooked. An unexpected connection. A friend who may need me. A neighbor I need to meet. A group of Christ-seekers in my home. A group of people who need each other. A church that is stirring. Reignited passion. Reignited mission. Reignited relationship.

And while some days are tough, the sweetness is pervading. Cleaning up after hosting our community group in our home, I ponder these thoughts. Ella plays a song called “Morning” on the piano as I sweep up the kitchen. It feels like morning—no longer like mourning.

Sensing Him in the Senseless

We found Angel dead this morning. Killed by a coyote a couple of days prior. Our family dog of four years—a Christmas gift for Ella. A useless, stupid tragedy. A senseless act of nature. Crushing childhood hearts and dreams. I try to make sense of it.

Two days before, on Ella’s birthday morning, our trash had been ravaged, old coffee filters and chewed meat packages strewn across the lawn. Without time to clean up the mess, I loaded the kids in the car for school. We got home late that evening, and as I was cleaning it up, I realized that Angel was nowhere to be found. I called for her, searched the yard with a flashlight. Gary mentioned that he had heard her yelp outside our window as he was getting ready for work that morning, the sun still sleeping.

I had asked God, for the kid’s sake, to let us find her—deep down knowing what had happened. Within the past two weeks, we’d lost an array of animals—a new kitten, bunnies, chickens. We thought it was a neighbor’s dog. Ella had found the kitten in the yard. Tears streaming down her face. Dutch asked why everything had to die.

Ella has big plans with friends and a sleepover for her birthday. We get home late. Angel’s still missing. I know deep down. The girls wake up and make cinnamon toast. They get dressed to go outside. I lace my tennis shoes to go searching, but the girls beat me to her. Ella with her tear-stained face comes back to the house and says, “We found her.” I go to see for myself, buzzards swarming overhead.

Sometimes things just don’t make sense. Animals die. Best friends move away. A coworker gets cancer. Relationships break. Friends’ marriages end. I ask God, “Why?” I feel like Job. I know that I can handle it, but I worry if my kids can—if they are strong enough. The questions from them come again. Why do all of our friends have to move? Why does everything have to die? In my mind I revisit a conversation with Ella. Her sentiment: Why should I even invest in people—in new relationships—if they’re all going to leave me in the end? How do you answer that?

 My fear? That my kids will remember their childhood as one of pain and dejection—rather one of enchantment, adventure, and carelessness. That the day we started losing people and things will outweigh the years of plenty in their minds. Is a happy childhood all that it’s cracked up to be anyway? I know tons of people who didn’t have one. Is a happy childhood even a real thing? I thought I had one. Or is it a façade, a trick mirror? A phony time that ends in disappointment?

Again, I feel like Job. Sometimes you think that you’ve lost so much, you can’t possibly lose anything more. And then you do. Over and over and over again. It makes you want to hold tight of who you’ve got and to loosen your grip on all things in the here and now, all at the same time. It makes you want to grasp hold of something that can’t be taken away. These kinds of days make you want to stare up into heaven and say, “Lord, come now.” How do you stay joyful in times such as these?

Riding on the lawn mower, the sky overcast above, I watch as Gary scoops Angel’s small, lifeless body up with a shovel. Tears well up in my eyes as I think how she was not what she is now. All the wild, endearing energy of her spirit is gone from her shell. Who she was is not her body. It reminds me of how temporary this all is—how this physical world will fade away—how this is not the end. How the spiritual world will go on. How we as followers of Him will receive new bodies. How we will eventually live in a world with no sickness or death.

But the pain is still here and raw right now. I still try to make sense of it. Where is God in all of this? Why let this happen? I still praise you even though I do not understand. But please help me understand. The clouds still fill the sky. Where are you, God? I look up and a hole in the clouds just the size of the sun appears; bright, blinding light shines down on me like a spotlight. God, is that you?

At church we are studying the Beatitudes. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Am I blessed? How so? Is it because I know the devastation of this temporary life in such a way that I crave eternity. I crave the Comforter. I struggle to comfort my own kids. What do you say? Life’s not fair, but it’s temporary. They ask the same questions over and over again. I ask my God the same questions over and over again. I don’t know the why, but I know the Who. He knows the sadnesses of our hearts, the joys, too. He gives and takes away. He is there, always will be, always has been. And when the mountain of losses compounds and conflicts me, I will go up on the mountain to be with Him—and to be comforted. I will sense Him in the senseless.

When You Have a Wound That Just Won’t Heal

What do you do when you have a wound that just won’t heal? When pain permeated your life—got underneath your skin—and now loss lingers and that deep sadness just won’t quit? When your soul keeps bleeding joy and energy drains from your arteries? When everything you’ve tried doesn’t work and that wound can’t be cauterized? What do you do? What do I do?

I’ve had that kind of wound, and if I’m real honest, the scab’s still newly forming. That kind of wound when all you held dear got stripped away—one thing after another. Years of bleeding, wondering when all is this going to stop. But it keeps on, and now I’m skin and bones left pleading, “Jesus, stop the bleeding.”

What do you do when you have a wound that just won’t heal? You grab hold of Jesus.

Three different gospel accounts tell us of a woman who had suffered constant bleeding for twelve years. Matthew 9 gives us insight into her thinking: “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” In other words, if I can just be close to Jesus, come in contact with this divine person, this God incarnate, things will be better. My life will be better—if I can be close to Him, if I can touch Him. Well, this woman, at the end of her rope and desperate as she was, only had to touch the fringe of his robe, and immediately the bleeding stopped. Jesus asked in Luke 8:45, “Who touched me?” No one would admit to it, and Peter reasoned that the entire crowd was pressing up against him.  Jesus replied in verse 46, “Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”

Oh, to deliberately touch Jesus. We all desire His benefits—the healing that can come. But think about just touching Him—having contact with Him, being near Him. That is where the sweetness lies.

When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she fell to her knees and confessed that it was her. Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.”

I want that type of faith—that faith that says the only thing that can cure me is closeness with my Savior. That being with Him will mend that wound and soothe my soul. And even though my circumstances may not change, the joy stops bleeding out and instead starts swelling up. And the tears that welled up in my eyes mix with scripture that floods my soul and washes clean the wound that would not heal. And all the stripping away was worth the intimacy now found with the one who fills my soul with joy again.

What do you do when you have a wound that just won’t heal? You grab hold of Jesus. You get into scripture and read His word. You do everything you can to be close to Him. You hang onto Him like He is your very life and breath. You grab hold and don’t let go.