On the Common 131
Absurdity and grit.
Hello everyone,
Over the past two weeks, I have been receiving emails for a woman who has a very similar name to mine. She has been renovating a house. As far as I can tell, her new house has a home theatre, a gym, a sauna, six bedrooms, and eight bathrooms. She is about to spend a ridiculous amount of money on blinds and light fixtures.
If the designers keep emailing me, I will expect a weekend invitation in exchange for all the time I’ve spent setting everyone straight.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Hidden Grit
Friends, my writing life has been a bit haphazard lately. Here’s an essay that I started for another site, and then I missed the deadline. So you are the beneficiaries. I polished it up for you.
Outside the New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue are two larger-than-life lions. Lions were chosen as the library mascot even though some people wanted beavers or bison (both North American animals). The lions were installed just before the library opened in 1911. Their names remind us of two necessary virtues: Patience lies to the south of the main stairs; Fortitude rests to the north. Just two blocks over from bustling Times Square and eight blocks south of the towering spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral lie these great lions, stalwart and settled.
These majestic statues weren’t always named thus; at first, they were named for the wealthy patrons who gave funds to open the library: Astor and Lenox. But during the Great Depression, Mayor LaGuardia decided the lions were due for a renaming. He named them for two qualities he thought New Yorkers would need to weather the storm of the Great Depression. Patience. Fortitude.
While patience is daily required at the surface, fortitude rests deeply within. A word akin to fortitude might be what our English translations of the Bible call “steadfastness,” defined as “a life of faithful endurance amid troubles and afflictions.” In his New Testament letter, James encourages Christians to allow it to have its “full effect.” (1:3) This is an intriguing picture: fortitude wants to do something to us. It wants to transform us—but it will undoubtedly do so through “troubles and afflictions.”
Maybe we would do better to call this bluntly: grit. It isn’t flashy or glittering. It does not look pretty all the time. It is not immediate; it is hard-won.
Hidden Grit
When people ask me about our kids’ ages, I give them the necessary facts and figures. Four boys in four years; one little girl three years later. Five in eight years. An abundant blessing from God, to be certain. But also....a whole lot of work up front! My usual reply is, “When number three came, there was a long season when someone was usually crying. Sometimes it was me.”
Young motherhood is mostly a hidden occupation. It is late nights, early morning wakeups, and manual labor. It is squeezing in a shower while the baby is happy in their seat, just for ten minutes. It is making one more sandwich and pulling one more load of sheets out of the dryer. These are thankless tasks, done in private for the good of the little ones under our care.
Though social media has tried hard to make it glamorous with glossy pictures and captions, there is nothing immediately attractive about the constant labor of caring for small children.
One element of developing fortitude is knowing who we are, and perhaps more so, who God is. Carrying on in the face of adversity requires a deep knowledge of our identity, held firmly in God’s hands. He has not left us alone; He is present in the day-to-day. And more than that, He is committed to our remaking. He will make us like Himself.
There is reason to hope amidst this process because Scripture tells us that we are being remade—indeed, that this is the very process by which we are made like Christ. In his letter to the Romans, Paul puts this characteristic in his strand of transformational ones: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame....” (Rom. 5:3)
We can also be encouraged by the example of Peter, who we know, perhaps more than others, was shown to lack grit in his travels with Jesus here on earth. He fell at a critical moment, failing to acknowledge Jesus’ lordship, denying him as Jesus headed to the cross. Yet Jesus restored him, reminding him of who he was and what he was called to. Encouraged and confident, later in his life, Peter tells us steadfastness will “keep us from being unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:6)
Amidst the piles of laundry, with spit-up on their shoulders and sipping their coffee that has long since grown cold, young moms can be encouraged that in their hidden efforts, they, too, are being remade. As the grit and fortitude of young motherhood are called for, they can continue to endure, understanding that they will not be put to shame.
If fortitude is required in a circumstance, that means fortitude is growing—as it is demanded, it rises. The Holy Spirit is calling it forth, raising up in us the identity and assurance needed to weather the storm. God values this characteristic in believers, and He is committed to cultivating it in us.
For the Anglophiles
Do you know about this series? Letters Live.
From the description:
On March 3rd, 1610, the one time Lord Mayor of London Sir John Spencer died, leaving behind a vast fortune to be inherited not by his daughter, Elizabeth, whom he had often treated terribly, but to her husband, Lord William Compton—an amount so large, in fact, that Compton was said to have “lost his way” for some time. It was in 1618, when Compton’s health was restored, that Elizabeth wrote him the following letter and listed the many ways in which was to spend some of her late father’s money.
Reads & Listens of the Week
You’ll have to sign in once to read this reflection from Kathy Keller on 30 Years of Ministry.
The bow-tied host who tries to maintain order on Inside the NBA, Ernie Johnson, was the guest on Dadville this week. We have admired this guy’s character for a long time.
Please change your hold music. A doctor does some math on how much of his life he has spent listening to CVS’ hold music.
Embrace the World’s Miraculous Absurdity. “Why should we bother making our beds when the fabric of the universe could (theoretically) unravel at any moment?”
Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit