When Resilience and Grit Aren’t Enough

Statistically, my life ought to be a serious mess right about now.

It’s true that much of my ’70s and ’80s childhood was a fairly typical American suburban experience. But there was a lot going on behind the scenes, and before I was ten years old, I had learned two survival skills used by many children living in a highly unstable environment: how to lie about my family situation and how to hide things from others.

In order to avoid shame and to protect my personal and family security, I learned how to lie about why we had so little furniture or food, why I had no appropriate clothing for school events, why my mom’s checks bounced, and why we never stayed anywhere for long. I also learned how to hide where I lived (especially when living in a trailer), my mom’s revolving door of boyfriends, my family’s mental health issues, instances of domestic violence and verbal abuse, and the increasing pressure I faced to do poorly in school, use drugs, have sex, and lie to authority figures. I also learned quite young how to stuff my possessions into a garbage bag and skip out from an apartment in the middle of the night, how to cope when people took my things in order to pawn them, and when to stay inside the trailer when the cops came around.

Based on these and other factors, I have pretty high odds, statistically, of having numerous, overwhelming problems as an adult, whether mental or physical, relational or marital, financial or housing-related. But in all of those areas, despite the odds, I’m doing okay—and immensely better than the generation before me in my family. Why is that?

I recently reread J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (I highly recommend this 2016 book—rated R for language— no matter what your political stance). His upbringing was similar to my own in many ways, and he also defied the odds in terms of outcome in his education, his work, and his family life. He gives credit to certain teachers for their encouragement and genuine care for him, and to his grandparents for providing stability and unconditional (though often unconventional) love.

I can say the same. There were teachers I will never forget who helped me survive and thrive even though I was bullied at school, had an unstable home life, and was extremely shy and insecure up through middle school. Vance says that by high school, his self-image was “bitterness masquerading as arrogance.” My own teen and young adult self-image was fear masquerading as arrogance, and I’m thankful for the teachers who saw through that façade and liked me anyway.

My grandparents, like Vance’s, were my rock and my stability, my shelter in the storm. I was their only grandchild, and they stepped in countless times to be sure I was fed, clothed, and housed, from childhood through young adulthood.

Vance and I had something else in common during those difficult early years—the character trait that’s an excellent predictor of whether someone is likely to escape and overcome a dysfunctional childhood: resilience, which is the ability to bounce back from difficulty. A related character trait is grit, which is toughness, perseverance, and strength of character. By the grace of God, I seem to have been born with both resilience and grit. As far as I know, I didn’t do anything to acquire them on my own.

Resilience will help a child survive and thrive despite a far-from-perfect childhood. Grit and determination will open up many opportunities for success in life, and can even help put an end to generational sins. Both resilience and grit served me well and helped me get on the right track in life by the time I was in my late twenties. I acquired a college degree, got a job I enjoyed and was good at, and married a man who came with a genuinely loving, non-dysfunctional family.

But something was still “off.” Still missing. Still tying my insides up in knots.

I had made a stable life for myself, but it felt like it was built on shifting sand rather than solid rock. I had begun a family of my own, free of drama and dysfunction, but I still hadn’t forgiven my own relatives. I had a future ahead of me that looked pleasant and bright, but my past haunted me almost daily.

All of this … even though I had recently accepted Christ as my Savior, had started going to church regularly, and was approaching my new Christian faith with the same determination and grit as I had everything else in my life.

That was thirty years ago, and that’s about how long it’s taken me to come to terms with my past and find healing, peace, and freedom in Christ.

When I became a Christian, a few things about me changed right away: I stopped cussing, for one—my sailor’s vocabulary vanished into thin air. My life changed enough that people I had known for years noticed, and began questioning what was wrong with me (why didn’t I believe anymore that a woman ought to be able to abort her baby?—that was a big one). My husband and I developed patterns of tithing and family devotions and biblical worldviews that were contrary to our previous lives.

But almost never did I have the opportunity to give my testimony. Almost never did I reflect on my past except to remember it from my own childlike perspective. It was only when I began to tell my story to others and to view my relatives in a new way—perhaps more like God’s perspective?—that I truly began to heal and find freedom from my past. I had relied on my old friends, resilience and grit, to change my life outwardly, but my heart still needed to be transformed.

One conversation with my mom before she died started the ball rolling on seeing my relatives as human beings, made in God’s image, with complicated and often sad stories of their own. Giving my testimony felt like loosening a cord tied tightly around my heart, allowing it to beat freely again. Acknowledging and expressing gratitude for those whom God placed in my life at just the right time, such as a father figure to my fatherless self, or a teacher who truly cared for me, allowed me to replace bitterness and fear with thankfulness. And I believe that reading Hillbilly Elegy eight years ago was another factor in helping me let go and heal.

The reason this book was helpful to me was that it’s an honest book about a difficult childhood, one that I could fully identify with, but the author managed to not throw his family under the bus, like so many “terrible childhood” memoirs do. He clearly had affection, respect, and gratitude for his grandparents, and sympathy for his mother despite the pain she had caused him. He states in the book that he had many emotions toward his mom, but had never tried sympathy, which resonated greatly with me.

I’m trying hard to age with wisdom, not bitterness. My Christian faith makes that far easier than if I were to attempt this on my own. I’m thankful to God that he’s allowed me to live long enough to forgive, and even better, to understand and empathize with my own relatives and what they dealt with in life, long before I ever knew them. I’m thankful that he has not only improved my life circumstances, but also has changed my heart.

I don’t know why things happened in my life as they did. I don’t know why I was dealt the hand that I was, and I don’t know why “I alone escaped” to not only survive but seemingly thrive in ways that my family was never able to achieve—especially in having a stable, loving marriage and four children, who, Lord willing, will love Jesus for all of their days.

In my mind there resides a clear memory of myself at age eleven, standing outside in rural Florida where my mom and I had fled to escape her abusive second husband. I was crying my heart out, believing that things couldn’t possibly get any worse and begging God to somehow show me what my life would look like in ten or twenty years, just to give me hope. I wanted so desperately to know that I would get past the present difficulty, make it to adulthood, and find stability, peace, and a drama-free life. God didn’t give me a vision that day, but I look around me now and see that he absolutely did answer my prayer, in his own way and in his own time.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay