Perhaps it's because I am chewing on this Resilience Bone for a while now but I notice the word is used more often than I remember. In recent weeks I heard a football coach say he wants to build a resilient team. An oyster farmer wants to build resilient stock on his farm. A teacher plans to build resilience into the curriculum. A high school student got 100% for an assignment on Resilience. Wisdom and insight born of experience, I suspect.
Resilience doesn't get much attention in good or easy times. But it's a different story when we are staring at difficult stuff. Especially if the difficult stuff has no clear end date. It seems the realities of medium and long-term challenges to our way of life are glaring at every person in our country. I have just spoken to an 81yr old lady who struggles with several health issues decades old. She is off to the pharmacy to collect a new asthma preparation (after a negative result from her Covid test) so she can continue to prepare meals for her daughter's family. The daughter has complex chronic health problems. So Mum decided it's her responsibility to cook for that family. Resilience.
The only way I can remember what resilience really means is to keep it simple. For me, it means deciding, then doing the best I can 'to get back up' one more time after 'being knocked down'. I talk to God about this every day-not always relaxed conversations. Looking back on these chats, I accept outcomes are for my long-term good even if I didn't recognise that at the time. Hindsight does that.