It’s All Definitional
Which do you prefer: Patience or Tenacity?
I like using words that help me draw pictures. Think of the word patience. Parents with young children come to mind. The definition for patience is “the capacity for waiting: the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties.” That sounds just like a mother of preschoolers. Or I can visualize a father working with a child, teaching them how to build a bird feeder. Showing children how to work with sharp tools takes lots of calm perseverance.
Then close your eyes and pull up a picture of tenacity. Tenacious is defined as “determined or stubborn: tending to stick firmly to any decision, plan, or opinion without changing or doubting it.” I see a teenage girl, arms folded and her jaw set in defiance. Can you see her? Standing in front of her mother, daring her to try and change her mind. The daughter believes with all her being that Mother does not understand. She, the daughter, just needs to stick to her guns. Her hope is mother will somehow give in.
Both Found in Scripture
Patience or Tenacious. Similar words but vastly different pictures. Both powerful actions when appropriate. Scripture shows Jacob expressing these as strengths. He was patient when it came to love and having Rachel as his bride (Genesis 29:16-28), but he was anything but patient when he wrestled with God, (Genesis 32:22-30). His tenacity … his determination … besides giving him a wrenched hip, also gave Israel its new name.
Which do you prefer: Patience or Tenacity?
What About You?
Can you say you’ve been both patient and tenacious at the right times? I’d love to hear about it … from one word-nerd to another.
Patience and tenacity in action … Ladies of the Fire.
Can a woman on the run find herself again?
Ladies of the Fire
brought us to the late 1960s as we met the newly-widowed Lily-Rose Pembrick reeling as she fled Lincoln, Nebraska, with her children. Only taking the cash from the house safe and what she could get her hands on at the family bank, she left the recently-inherited and successful Pembrick Transportation company behind. Exhausted from driving all night, she stopped in Applegate, Ohio, and decided to start a new life on Norwood Street. There, she met Fiona Kasey, an African-American no-nonsense housekeeper/companion to an elderly white woman, and Sugar Bowersox, a Southern spitfire who has lost herself in motherhood.
Together, they enjoyed Lily-Rose’s backyard fire pit, where dreams were spoken and secrets revealed. As they embraced a kinship they never would have sought, Lily-Rose began thinking her past could finally be laid to rest—until someone ended up dead.
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