The Myth of Bouncing Back
"For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again." ~ Proverbs 24:16, NKJV
You may have heard this verse as the tagline for perseverance. But what informs the resolve to never quit? Have we, perhaps, gotten resilience wrong by making it a glorified version of bouncing back?
We've convinced ourselves that resilience is the product of our strength, our ability to muster up courage, or our ability to pull ourselves up from the pit by sheer will. But what if that definition fails to speak to the way resilience actually manifests in our lives?
We aren't tired of being called to rise again; we are tired of a cheap version of this call. The cheap kind of resilience that fails to account for its own weight and how it forces us to engage in the rhythm of falling and rising again and again.
"Sometimes rising changes us — and the journey of regaining our footing is embracing every stage of that rise."
This book invites us into something deeper than another pep talk about resilience — something that doesn't demand we bounce back in the same shape we were before life knocked us down. Because sometimes rising changes us, and the journey of regaining our footing is embracing every stage of that rise.
And that's what resilience really is. It's not a polished, shiny version of perseverance wrapped up in a tidy motivational slogan. It's a process. It's breaking and rebuilding. It's learning to breathe again, step-by-step, even when our lungs feel too tight and our legs feel too weak.
