Adulting for Jesus: Purpose, Trusting God and Obviously BurritosSample

Learning Grit

Looking back, my twenties were basically a series of humiliating events connected by trips to Chipotle. I realized my talents weren’t anything special, my dreams weren’t going anywhere, not everyone wants to be friends when you don’t agree on everything, and the longer I floundered figuring things out, the more credit card debt I amassed. (Perhaps I should’ve cut back on my trips to Chipotle ... or at least skipped the guacamole.)

Each failure felt like God had abandoned me. Wasn’t I special? Hadn’t God set me aside to do great things like I’d been told? Why had God given me a dream but not the talent to achieve it? What lesson was I supposed to be learning from all this failure and rejection anyway? Surely if I knew what I was doing, life wouldn’t be this hard.

Sometimes God gives us the strength to nail an interview and land the job of our dreams. Other times, though, He gives us the strength to make it through another day at a job we can’t stand. Both are God’s grace. Getting through life, I’ve learned, takes something I call godly grit. And unfortunately, this godly grit is developed through hard circumstances, not easy ones.

After almost ten years of teaching piano lessons, I noticed a difference between students who stuck with it and students who quit. About two years into studying music, kids who didn’t show a lot of natural talent in the beginning, but who had practiced regularly, suddenly began advancing quickly. After two years of struggle, something clicked, and almost overnight piano became significantly easier. Even more interesting, the struggling gave them a stronger sense of pride in their musical abilities. They enjoyed not only playing piano but the learning process as well. Because they had a track record of overcoming challenges, they didn’t feel instantly defeated when they encountered difficult new concepts. In short, they had learned grit.

On the flip side, I noticed the students who advanced quickly in the beginning often hit a wall after a year or two. Even the most naturally talented musician eventually reaches a level where the music requires diligent practice and effort. These inherently gifted students almost always wanted to quit when the songs became challenging. Because they hadn’t learned how to handle challenges in their early lessons, the effort felt agonizing and, as one student put it, “like a mortal punishment.” They only enjoyed music when it was easy, not because they’d seen the payoff of their hard work. They hadn’t learned grit.

Adulting requires learning how to fall and get back up again, and again, and again. Godly grit comes from understanding that struggles, setbacks, and disappointments are not only parts of life but that God uses them to shape us, deepen our faith, and prepare us for our callings. If your childhood bore any resemblance to mine, then you’re probably just now learning to face life-altering disappointments and setbacks in your twenties and thirties.