Find Your Grit

Again and again and again

What do you think of when you hear the word “grit”?

Are you like me, do you think of Olympians doing the impossible, of marathon runners, Iron Man athletes, weightlifters and women in labor?

Do you think of shaking hands, forehead veins, pinched brows and the call to hold on just a little longer?

Do you think of gritted teeth, cramping muscles, and deep breaths that serve as one final push?

Do you think of physical fitness, of achievements of the body?

Because I do.

So I was surprised to look up the definition and find this:

grit (n): firmness of mind or spirit : unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger.

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I recently watched The Young Woman and the Sea on Disney+, which is about Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

During her swim, someone on the boat beside her pointed ahead and asked, “Why is the water red?!”

It was because they’d approached a field of jellyfish and there was no way around them. She had to swim through.

So she did.

She paddled and she kicked and she screamed and her body became covered in lashings from the stings. She breathed and kicked and screamed and paddled and breathed and kicked and screamed and paddled, and eventually, she was through. She flipped over onto her back and looked up at the sky, her body red and raw. She closed her eyes and took a few moments to rest, unable to get out of the water because it would disqualify her attempt.

That, I thought watching the film, is grit.

Not only to swim towards the jellyfish, but to keep swimming after she started getting stung, to keep swimming even though every instinct was likely telling her to stop. Every instinct, that is, except for one. The one that convinced her she could attempt the swim across the channel in the first place, the one that helped her ignore the slew of men that told her it was impossible for a woman to do such a thing, the one that told her to swim through the jellyfish, and the one that told her to keep swimming afterward.

And this, I think, is what the Merriam Webster definition is describing.

This ability to cling to something that goes against every other instinct. Because while some people might seem “better designed” for feats of physical fitness, oftentimes what makes up real grit is that spirit, that firmness of mind.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently in terms of faith.

To strengthen our faith is not as straight forward as gradually lifting heavier weights or shaving a few seconds off our mile time, but it is about doing the impossible, about ignoring every other instinct except one.

Because to live by faith is to go against the culture, values, and expectations of the world.

It is to trust God in every circumstance and to believe in God’s plans for your life.

It is to love your enemies, to give rather than take, to serve rather than be served.

To have spiritual grit is to turn to God again and again and again and again. It is to look at our lives like Trudy did that open sea, knowing that there may be dangers up ahead, that people are going to tell us to turn around, that some of what God might ask us do seems impossible, but to start swimming anyway.

It’s casting out the calls to doubt, to run, to spiral down into bitterness and resentfulness, and trusting God in the darkest darkness.

Our human bodies are capable of doing incredible things, but our human spirits know no bounds.

Physical grit fights, but spiritual grit abides, it overcomes, it conquers.

So dig deep, turn to God again and again and again, swim through those jellyfish, grit those teeth.