resilience Archives

Note: This blog post was first published on the Grow2Serve blog and is used with permission. Our guest author regularly facilitates a 2-week online course entitled “Sustainable Resilience“. This course is for cross-cultural workers who have lived at least 3 months in a new culture. Finding meaning and purpose During “Sustainable Resilience”, we spend significant time talking about #10. We are referring to Southwick and Charney’s list of ten factors that were almost always present in those who demonstrated high resilience in adversity. Here’s #10: Meaning and Purpose – were active problem solvers who looked for meaning and opportunity in the midst of adversity and sometimes even found humor in the darkness; used their traumatic experiences as a platform for personal growth.Southwick, Steven; Charney, Dennis. Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, p. 16.… Read the whole post

God can transform the most painful experiences of our childhood into preparation to bless others. Joseph told his brothers many years after they sold him into slavery, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:20). I just finished listening to a similar story. In The Tank Man’s Son: A Memoir, Mark Bouman shares his gut-wrenching account of pain and misery, while growing up in rural Michigan. He was the son of an abusive man who owned a tank and ran a gun range near his home where military weapons of various kinds were regularly (and illegally) fired. His memories are terrifying – and at times comical – but always highly unusual. As a young boy, he suffered shrapnel wounds while helping his dad with the shooting range. He found a huge tree root… Read the whole post

Blog topics

Tag: resilience

Can I stop asking “what’s wrong?”

Tanks and Training for Missions