Perseverance: Maintaining your focus to reach your purpose
When was the last time you’ve been challenged to persevere; challenged to push back against the chaos of your life to reach forward to achieve your goals?
This week was a lesson in true perseverance for me. Actually, this week was more like the “icing on the cake” to about 11 months of trying times and overwhelming odds that forced my husband and me to push back against the junk of life. I want to talk with you about perseverance and three tools I’ve found that we need to succeed in our personal and professional lives. Today, I am going to introduce the first tool — perspective.
Last Friday, my husband picked me up from work. This has become our normal routine since we’ve become a one-car family. Although it has its challenges, having only one car has forced us to be even more intentional with our time management and planning. As we proceeded past a local shopping plaza, our car shut off. Just stopped. The lights were on but nobody was home. We began to pray and ask God for favor. We both said, “Not today,” laughed and held our breaths as Eric tried to start the car again. The car started immediately. “Thank you Lord,” we both shared a sigh of relief. The irony of the car turning off is that just a few days prior, my mom had experienced car trouble. We had been praying for her and grateful that all turned out well in her situation. She was inconvenienced for an entire day but she was safe. Her spirit of excellence through that trying time was what I intended to write about for this week — but then all kind of crazy happened to us.
We were able to get back home safe. Although the car turning off seemed like an electrical issue or minor malfunction, we thought it best to check all of the fluids and schedule an appointment with the dealership. Through the weekend, the car seemed to function just fine. Sunday we went to church, where listened to a great sermon about living with a “Spirit of Excellence.” We went to Marshalls and Kroger to do some shopping. By the way, while at Marshalls, we spent some time shopping with Les Brown. For real. OK – maybe we didn’t shop with him – but we did admire the fact that someone with his influence and wealth can shop uninterrupted at Marshalls on a Sunday. Anyway, on our way home from shopping the car started making a sound — it kind of sounded like a broken belt. We were concerned but also felt good that we had already made an appointment for Monday to take the car to the dealership.
Sunday evening I decided to make a turkey. I had been craving a great, carved turkey sandwich. As I was checking the turkey, the oven door closed on my right arm, just above my elbow. I immediately applied cold water, treated it with ice packs and coco butter. Pain was my bed buddy all night long. By morning the pain had subsided but the burn area remained quite sensitive.
As Monday morning continued, I treated my burn and Eric prepared to take me to work. Driving there, the noise from the car was so loud that you could hear it outside of the vehicle. We looked at each other and prayed that Eric could get me to work, back to the house and then to dealership. Later that morning, I borrowed a vehicle and followed Eric to the dealership. We got about 2 minutes from our house and the engine in the car blew up. There was no major exterior damage, but the car was done for. We called AAA and got it towed. Eric jumped in the vehicle I was driving and we just laughed, a Holy Spirit kind of giggle, all the way to the dealership. We had peace that whatever they told us, we would “figure it out.”
After getting our vehicle in the garage and checking on a few things, the technician came to us and said that the engine had blown up, pushing a metal rod through the oil tank. He said he would call us after he knew more about what needed to be done and the cost to fix it. About an hour later he called and said that the damage was covered under a recent recall and that the manufacturer would cover the cost of the damage. A rental car would be available at the end of the day.
The next day, Eric went to one of our rental properties to finish cleaning it out as the tenant had moved out on June 1. The month prior, Eric had visited with our tenant and reviewed her plans to leave as well as inspected the property. For the last year, we had provided financially for the tenant and her family after she lost her job. She was a long-time tenant who at one point we offered rent-to-own options (which she declined). When Eric arrived at the house, the property was virtually destroyed with holes intentionally left in each wall.
The way I presented the past few days, you’d think that there was no silver lining, no blessing, no positive thing to pull from it. But there is so much to celebrate my friends. When the car first shut off, it turned back on. When I burned my arm, I could’ve caused much more damage. When the car broke down, the agent on AAA gave us priority booking so that we could get picked up faster. When the car blew up, the manufacturer was responsible to pay for it and gave us a rental. When we found the rental destroyed, we had enough money to have someone come haul away items and they did it for much less than we anticipated.
Choose to have a positive perspective my friends. Positive thinking can keep you in the game. Emotions drive our behavior and will lead us to open doors or closed doors. Which one would you prefer? Read Proverbs 18:21. Can’t wait til our next chat when we talk about the power of push back.
Gina Watts is a former resident of Fayette County, now living in Columbus, Ohio. She serves multiple communities as an advocate, educator, and leader. Follow Gina on Twitter @professorgmarie.