Sunday, May 13, 2012

my god and my mother

My mother was someone special. Many of us feel that way about our own maternal figure, and it's easy to see why. Mothers can fill our bellies with warm cookies, rub our weary shoulders, and spangle our memorable moments with celebration. My mother was not so great at the making of cookies--not for lack of talent, but of time--once three, four, and five daughters tumbled in to fill her days with mud pies and make-believe. She did relish the act of creation: we each have a handmade Christmas stocking from an earlier, craftmaking period, and the stitches tell that her sewing was much better than mine is. Somewhere along the way, though, it became less important that she made things for us from scratch, and more important that the household division of labor prepare us for future life on our own. Around sixth grade, we each were assigned our own weekly meal to make. Minus a few confusions of salt for sugar, everyone benefited from the experience of making and partaking together. Mom was the glue that made all the macaroni, popsicle sticks, and glitter hold together: our meals, projects, and special seasons.

Growing up in a navy family, special seasons could come at any time of year. Pictures bear witness to posters and coordinated outfits, part of our homecoming rituals for Dad's return from months on a submarine. In the parenthetical, pregnant times between his coming and going, we never seemed to lack, but enjoyed elaborate 3-dimensional cakes frosted by hand, themed birthday parties by the beach, and visits with family and friends. There were whole days spent in the water, broken only by a midday picnic. Mom at the pool those summers was my first glimpse of raw womanly power: elastic, surging, gliding through the water. She was water to me; a female foil for Poseidon, willing the oceans to give Dad safe passage, washing, bubbling, brimming and rushing to fill in the empty spaces in our days. She used water especially to fill our free time, sending us back to swim lessons until we completed all of the Red Cross swimming levels, making sure we each felt powerful and at home in the water from an early age. She was savvy enough to redouble her energies by letting our swim instructors wear us out all morning, before swimming with us all afternoon. With extra sets of eyes and arms all around, often in coordination with other mothers, the five of us sisters were far easier to keep safely busy and entertained. Even so, she never let us think that the water was inherently safe, but taught us how to keep a watchful eye on each other. I once watched her, fully-clothed, enter a friend's backyard pool (her rescue training taking control) when two of my sisters were locked in a dire, deep-end struggle past the point of hearing reason. In moments like these, she seemed to wield the power of life and death to me. 

That she brought us into the world, creatively sustained us and restored us from skinned knees, broken arms, and wounded pride is God-like and deserves reflection. But that is just the beginning. In the arc of my mother's story, it seems easy to trace the peaks and valleys. Perhaps the highest peak was when she wrote her book, Footsteps of the Faithful, about our adventures as a military family from Groton to Guam. In a sense, she was a Penelope to my father's never-ending odyssey, savvy defender of home and hearth while my father, "skilled in all ways of contending," came and went with the tides through many deployments. But my mother did more than weave tales and pine for Dad's return. To me, she became larger than life when he was away. Besides the dogged synchronization of schools and soccer, births and homecomings, she strung our days together with a sense of adventure that gave each deployment (and each new home) its own story within the story. Her narrative ability went beyond the creation of meaning: she also chose to breathe life into people through her use of language. "The tongue holds the power of death and life" she used to remind us, and exemplified speech that was "seasoned with salt" meant to encourage fellow God-followers and woo future ones (Proverbs 18:21 & Colossians 4:6). She used Scripture in song to help us "hide God's word in our hearts," and we marveled at her ability to find that "word aptly spoken" both for her family members and friends. (Psalm 119:11 & Proverbs 25:11).

She could also be like the sea in stormy weather, with unpredictable swells that threatened to capsize conversation. It seems any woman formidable enough to weather life as a navy spouse would have to have a few barnacles, too. What staggers me, looking in the mirror, is how some of her rough edges have passed on to me with the strength and the salt. I hear her in my arguments about dishes and mail-piles at the end of a long day...on ocassion, if I argue accidentally near a mirror, I see her. I stop, I breathe, and wonder. The roles are somewhat reversed: I do not wait, but come home to kiss my husband at day's end, tally the order and chaos, and am tempted to pronounce. Would I do it any better as a stay-at-home mom...could I? I am my mother's daughter, and that means strength and effervescence, but also the barnacles. "Reckless words words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing," I hear my Mom chide, and the implication is that we should speak only to give life to our fellow beings, never to take it (Proverbs 12:18). 

My mother and I are both good examples of how difficult it can be to harness the tongue, and well-meaning, purposeful women can often do the most harm to each other with their words. It's as if the pursuit of excellence in one woman's life precludes her from allowing another woman's excellence because it takes another form. One does not have to look far to find examples of this in our current political dialogue, and as a working mother who loved her stay-at-home mother, it saddens me to see women attacking and undermining each other in this way. I lost my mother the year I got married, the same year I also lost my grandmother. I often wonder what we would say to each other, my daughter bowling and beaming around on the floor during my lunch break or holiday leave. Mom usually disapproved of working motherhood, and struggled with the idea of me in harm's way when I joined the Army.  My mother and I probably would have to work hard at affirming one another's divergent paths in life, and we undoubtedly would have stepped on each other's toes at times. Even so, there are many unsaid things I wish I could share with her. I wish I could swap insights on marriage, on motherhood, on my vocational adventures. In some ways, the same iron jaw that got her through deployments on the homefront is the same one I'll rely on when I deploy: life in the trenches of childrearing and homemaking might not be so different from going to war. Both require ingenuity, endurance, and courage to face one's fears in a very fallen world. 

What to do with these inheritances? How to find just enough salt and the choicest words for the current task? How will I ensure that whether I am swimming forward or treading water, my strength will be renewed in proportion to the time and distance required? As I ask myself what she would do in my boots, I realize that my sisters and my daughter each hold clues. My daughter works at taking her first steps, and there is the furrowed brow, the brimming eyes, the hard-set jaw, the determined nostrils. My sisters compete in the rugby field, the office, the classroom and there are the flexing calves, the springing-forward torso, the long, swift arms and the fully-engaged eyebrows. And there--there--is the triumphant, overcoming grin of the struggler-turned-victor. These form a composite picture of a woman who has fully engaged her own childhood, adolescence and beyond, and is now ready to help sustain and nurture someone else--even as she herself continues to unfold. In our best moments as daughters, sisters, mothers, these are insights into very God: 

"It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
    it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
    a little child to the cheek,
    and I bent down to feed them."


At first glance, all this nurturing sounds so serene and beautiful. But it's not so idyllic when you're sweating, cleaning up the latest mess on the floor, your hair didn't quite get done and the ever-heavier baby is making excellent headway toward the stairs. Then there is the relative egocentrism of the child: "they did not realize it was I who healed them." My daughter only sees the one thing she wants us to do for her in that moment, not the stacks of other tasks that must be done, and tries to register her impatience as if she's got other places to be. In these moments we nurture her, yes, but it is not all peaches-and-cream and butterflies: it is phlegm and milk and blood and excrement, not for the faint of heart. That God's love for Israel--and for us, through Christ--is nurturing and tender and motherly should not come as a surprise, since life is full of all the toughest and most disgusting things...things mothers are always dealing with. Scripture is replete with more examples of God mothering us, but perhaps the most lasting images of God in this role start with the women we love best. Lest we make God in her image, we remember that Mother is a human creature, too. But we celebrate God's self-revelations through her in the hope that every day she is becoming more herself... more and more fit for heaven. That she always has another hand, hip, or shoulder with which to bring us along in that journey is marvelous.

Monday, March 12, 2012

the ugly-beautiful

72 hours can be brutally short, but they are, at least, more forgiving than 12, 24, or 48 hours. We measure time and expectations this way, our military minds stretching the limits of what is possible in a day. We refuse to say it can't be done, and, as a wise cross-country coach of mine used to say, "When we aim for what's impossible, we pass what is possible on the way." I feel this to be true, have seen it become true. It ennobles the gymnastics we do to "make it happen": the sense of urgency justifies the scrambling, the sleeplessness, the scribbling and furious typing and phoning. Our families, if they are sometimes agitated by the quick turnarounds, are often a little smug, too. They know they are tough. They know they are a kind of nomad. They know that they can weather things others never dream of. They hustle, take out the slack, help us through our packing lists, and all but stop the sun to get us ready to go out the door. They are a triumph of logistics, communication, intelligence and maneuver, and they keep us anchored in stormy seas, aiming steady when home is a moving target. I kiss my infant daughter and my husband on leaving, and it feels like a flip turn in the middle of a long swimming lap: I push, spring forward against my own current from a secure platform that allows me to displace the time that glides around and slips off of me.

In 72 hours, I am on an unfinished road that I have griped about many times before. The late-day trees are spectral, offering the rising tensions I used to feel when returning from vacation, back to work. Maybe, too, some regret clings to their boughs, cascading down with musty memories of things mismanaged, opportunities missed. I run, begin to revisit the site of old wounds, press them to see if they are still sore, much as I stretch travel- and workout-weary muscles, massaging them to feel the extent of the damage. Am I still that depressed person I was when last here? Am I able to trust, able to rejoice, able to abide? Can I once again push the "reset" button that had long stopped working the last time I stood outside that building near the corner, red-faced and seeing red? I retrace steps, old run routes, old commutes. Am I different enough? No one here would know to tell me: the faces all have changed. Am I resilient now, that thing that eluded me here?

Before showering, I release the pressure built up during a night of milk-making: just enough to tell my body to stop doing what I've asked it to do for ten months, to get ready instead to go to war. The war, representing so many human sacrifices--fueled by blood, sweat, sleepless months and tears. I heard this morning that it seems set back almost to day one because of one sergeant who left his base for a killing spree. I think of Afghan parents who have bloodstains where there used to be children, more collateral damage in a war difficult for anyone to understand. As a mother I am shocked again by what I have always known was possible and occurring; how anyone could be afforded or take the chance to hurt a child is beyond me. I ask what I imagine the parents ask, "God?!" and it isn't long before I have to start my shower to muffle the weeping. Crying in the shower, or in the rain, it's easier to hear that God is weeping, too.

I have clean, hot water, when so many do not. The steaming droplets catch and beam light. In the (renovated since I was here) locker room, someone has thoughtfully installed rainmaker showerheads that look artful and drizzle a steady shower that refreshes and reminds of the outdoors. The locker room is pleasant and professional, slipping me a note that someone values my time, my efforts, my missed morning at home. These are quality-of-life details I think would have appreciated when I was here before, repulsed by the chronic dankness and the hard water scum...but would I have given thanks for them? Would I have gone to work more grateful, more peaceful, able to inhabit each moment, one at a time? I have not always had eyes to see the small, good things of the everyday. I have felt entitled.

When I look at my scars through the lens of gratitude, I am staggered by how small they seem, how much healing has already occurred, how my picking at them only caused them to fester. Somewhere, in a perpetual war zone, a mother has just had her viscera ripped out: yesterday she had a child, and now in a few bloody moments, she does not. Is it the first time? Second? Third? Her child left this world in terror, helpless. It sears, it sears! And then it compels me...to thank God for my wounds. Thanks--for professional disillusionment, for personal loss and grief, for physical pain and discomfort?

Yes.

And mysteriously this does not make my problems disappear, does not make brassy idols of my work, the pursuit of happiness, or good health. All is not well, and these remain glaring, disparate, in contrast with what should be. But I am different. This is what the Psalmist was talking about:

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
The LORD performs righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
Bless the LORD, all you works of His,
In all places of His dominion;
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
(Psalm 103:2-6, 8, 10-15, 22 NASB)

This calling to mind of gifts, many which we must keep open hands to receive daily, despite the clenching reactions to evil and pain in the world, is a habit that requires further cultivation, no matter what piece of earth I am standing on in the moment. I pray for the now childless woman I have known and imagined. I do not know how to pray for her, but I pray, more with molecules and electric impulses than with words. This place for me is haunted, by what was, by what could be--it is both ugly and beautiful, saturated with the anxiety of becoming and the resignation of the unchangeable past. I am the same--still ugly, still beautiful, already and not yet. I do not yet wear a habitual "crown of lovingkindness and compassion," I do not bless with all my soul. I pray that, with eyes to see the goodness of God and the creation, that my becoming will cause no collateral damage, that I will refrain from sprees of ingratitude.

"Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I will be blameless,
And I shall be acquitted of great transgression." (Psalm 19:13 NASB)

It would be a shame unworthy of the day's goodness, stuck in the ugly, to never take part in the beautiful.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

of diapers and documentaries

As I prepare for my next job, I am painfully aware that I have a lot of catching up to do: all the reading I've been doing about eco-parenting, infant pottying, child development and breastfeeding is wonderful, but it won't help me during my deployment to Afghanistan. Lately, I return home completely fried from working through lunches, endless reading and analysis, and the last thing I want to do is read anything. All I can say is: praise the Lord for the digital age.

My burgeoning Audible account is primed with audiobooks on the region for my daily commute and imminent roadtrips, and this helps me gain the needed momentum to tackle the stack of physical books I have amassed at home. It will be a miracle if I ever finish all of them, despite my customary bibliophilia. Another outlet for research on tired evenings after baby is in bed, collapsed on the couch with a plate of hot supper my husband has made and the laundry for me to fold, is our instant DVD queue. While the minimal selection for my area of interest makes me wary of biases my film sample might contain, I watch documentaries serially for perspective on what Afghans think, the balance of power in Asia and the Middle East, and the Global War on Terror. Even exploring Wild China can heighten my geopolitical awareness.  The documentaries and storytelling movies currently on my list?

National Geographic's Talibanistan
PBS's Motherland Afghanistan
Restrepo
Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan
Camp Victory, Afghanistan
PBS Frontline's Obama's War
PBS Frontline's Bush's War
PBS Frontline's Rules of Engagement
Kabul Transit
Behind Taliban Lines
Afghan Star: The Documentary
No One Knows About Persian Cats
Operation Homecoming 
The Kite Runner
The Stoning of Soraya M.
Persepolis

Please let me know if I have missed anything. I am sure there are many more of these out there to be discovered. In the meantime, I spend my evenings folding laundry and watching the documentaries I can find on Netflix. It is an odd pastime, but one that increasingly gets my mind prepared for the months ahead.

The more I watch, the more I am forced to recall how fallen our world is. I watch Motherland Afghanistan and I weep with a mother who has just lost twin babies several weeks apart for lack of neonatal intensive care equipment, proper nutrition and sanitation. As the light goes out of the obstetrician's eyes, I cry like it is my daughter I have just lost. I watch Restrepo and I put myself in the shoes of a dedicated, but culturally naive company commander whose lack of historical knowledge about the battlespace undermines his sincere efforts to fight insurgents in the Korengal Valley. I can taste the sweat and dust, my face heats up with frustration. I watch the swelling ranks of Afghan Star viewers cheer and vote for their favorite singer, even though I have only watched two episodes of American Idol and its spinoffs in my entire life. I feel the first-time thrill of democracy: texting my vote from a low-cost cell phone. I watch the story of a wealthy Pashtuni boy and his family's Hazara servant unfold through the flying of kites. It stings my eight-year-old self, way back on the playground, when the boys' friendship is threatened by violence and intolerance. I watch Soraya M. martyred by her husband's slander, and shudder as the village becomes party to his lustful pursuits of a girl half his age. I hear electric strains of underground music from Iranian musicians and I smile and think, rock on. My dinner churns in my stomach as I weigh the claims of Brave New Foundation that our actions in Afghanistan have not made the region more stable or the United States more secure from terrorism. I wonder what the history books will say about Operation Enduring Freedom at the end of my life...and after.

What C.S. Lewis famously wrote about reading great literature in his Experiment in Criticism is true of watching a good documentary for me: "...I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see." The ancient Greek playwrights would nod approvingly at my cathartic moments in watching the human drama unfold. Vague awareness that these things occur and recalling them to mind everyday are two different things, and even when I allow myself to forget about all the suffering and evil in the world, the prophet Jeremiah  (chapter 17) reminds me,

9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; 

Who can understand it?
10 “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds. 


I pray that I will not be complicit in deceit or injustice. I pray for the fortitude and honesty to bear these secondhand experiences intelligently, and without being slavish to my own biases. I pray for spiritual insight beyond the purview of analysis. I am not sure how anyone can be certain of what the ground truth is in any human endeavor--especially a war against an insurgency--yet I hope for wisdom. St. Paul reminds me in 1 Corinthians 2:

11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. 16 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ."

I fold diapers, I take deep breaths, and I watch. I pray to have the mind of Christ.



a debt of gratitude

There are a few phrases circulating throughout military senior leaders' speeches that have almost lost their meaning for me. "Train as you fight," "We need to nest our mission with higher," and "I would offer to you" all have begun to ring false in my ears as the leaders who use them often deviate wildly in action from their words, much to the harm of their subordinates and the organization. Perhaps a time will come when I can write about these experiences without bitterness or resentment. Today, however, I feel the overwhelming desire to redeem one such phrase: "we owe a debt of gratitude."

As I face the prospect of two more years in the Army, and the experience of deployed motherhood, there are days when I believe I can do it all with panache...and then there are days when I am tempted with despair. I have been fairly certain for most of my life that my true vocation lies outside the Army and in a high school class room. This keeps me looking for a light at the end of the tunnel during dark days, when the organizational culture that gives context to my task and purpose seems oppressive or futile. On brighter days, I believe that everything I do is contributing to some future endeavor, that nothing learned or experienced in uniform will go to waste.

In college I encountered the concept of Christian vocation, due to a project funded by the Lilly Endowment, expressed in the words of theologian Frederick Buechner: “Vocation is where your great joy meets the world's great need." These words rang true for me, and kindled a focused search for my personal calling. A combination of natural interest and ability, research and study, and the dire need in our educational system for good teachers have led me to conclude that teaching is my calling in the highest sense. I came into the Army both to finance that goal and to ensure that I would have experiences to draw from within my pedagogical practice. The privilege of serving my country and the joy being part of something bigger than myself were also motivators. The Army has not disappointed me in this, but the road has been fraught with disillusionment and burnout that I did not anticipate.

There was a time when my energy and enthusiasm for any task set before me were limitless, and I believed I could do "anything for two years." I used to say as much, varying the quantity of time by the commitments I faced. My boundless optimism seemed confirmed by performance evaluations and initial job satisfaction. By a severe kind of mercy, I reached total burnout during my third year of service, and this was strange because I had not yet gone to war. My frustration fed itself despite repeated attempts to reign in my angst, producing brutally candid--and at times disrespectful--communication with my superiors. Perhaps the most confusing was that my performance evaluations continued to glow with the highest praise. A part of me wanted them to lose confidence in me so that I wouldn't have to continue the sprint I'd begun as a bright-eyed lieutenant. If I couldn't have meaningful work in a synergistic command climate, I wanted to rest; to work like a mindless drone from 0600 to 1700 (from six to five) and go home. It was too painful to care about work I hated: I didn't want to be asked to lead special projects or put in any extra effort, since I had realized that a lack of boundaries at work had partly fueled my burnout. I both found the voice of advocacy for my troops and damaged their loyalty to the chain of command with my vocal feedback, and as I look back I wish I could erase the collateral damage of my learning process. 

Although the Army has currently embraced "resilience" as a watchword that nods at spiritual fitness as a factor, there has been little in the way of practical, functional advice of how to become resilient when all the odds seem against you. I find my best examples in my Soldiers and in my peers. The answers I sought for stress management, resiliency, and coping with authoritarian bosses are still emergent, but I am now grateful to have had the experience of burnout so young. I have the opportunity, in the context of Christian, family, and military community, to avoid the road to despair in future tough assignments. My next job promises to be sleepless and grueling, and I am unsure what the rewards will be while I am separated from my family. Of course, I want to do my part to ensure we all come home without violating rules of engagement, with our values and consciences intact. I want to help Afghans in a situation where it is increasingly unclear how we can have any lasting positive impact. I have few answers for how to tackle this next challenge, but there is the seed of something that I intend to cultivate more of: gratitude. I have this gut feeling that it might be the antidote to despair. 

The insight came to me while listening to Dr. Andrew Weil on the radio, and because I believe that all truth is God's truth, it was easy to appropriate what a secular source had to say about gratitude. After all, "the skies proclaim God's handiwork," so why shouldn't neurochemistry and health research do te same? Dr. Weil's latest book called Spontaneous Happiness highlighted two concepts that are staggeringly Biblical: the first is that "happiness" in the modern sense of feeling elated all the time is a misnomer that is unsupported by millennia of human experience. Instead, Dr. Weil suggested, we should focus on contentment as our goal, because it is our choice in response to a myriad of circumstances. The second was the idea that the expression of gratitude has measurable positive effects on patient health. Dr. Weil reported drastic improvements in patients who kept a gratitude journal, for example. 

Scripture is replete with verses about thanksgiving, but this morning I need one that addresses two different visions I have--one is on the other side of deployment, a triumphant and energetic overcomer in that high school classroom of my future--the other, of a dusty deployment full of tired computer-screen-eyes and the presence of real human suffering, both Afghan and Coalition. This is what I found in Psalm 69:

 29 But as for me, afflicted and in pain—
   may your salvation, God, protect me.
 30 I will praise God’s name in song
   and glorify him with thanksgiving.
31 This will please the LORD more than an ox,
   more than a bull with its horns and hooves.
32 The poor will see and be glad—
   you who seek God, may your hearts live!
33 The LORD hears the needy
   and does not despise his captive people.

What I immediately notice is that God is not like a capricious boss out to make a name for himself, but takes more pleasure in our songs of thanks than in our sacrifices. This assures me that while my blood, sweat and tears do not go unnoticed, the condition of my heart is the focal point for pleasing God. If I can recall this more often, perhaps I can avoid getting on the hamster-wheel of pleasing others through my hard work and accomplishments. If my work offerings to others are really just a way to give thanks to God, I might be able to renew my best energies rather than depleting them with little to show for it. What I notice next is that this burst of hope comes in the middle of a litany of corruption, societal vice, disillusionment and failed human relationships. The psalmist knows all too well what life in a fallen world is like. It is just possible that my deployment will be different than this, but it is likely that it will be a very mixed bag.

I have decided to explore how gratitude can inoculate me against the most toxic things I might experience. Today, I will focus on the fact that I will deploy with my sister, that my daughter is healthy, that my husband is my best friend, and that as he carries out the duties of full-time dad, he will enjoy the support of our family and friends, as well a Reserve job he loves while I am gone. I will be glad that I get paid to get back in (and stay!) in shape every morning, that there are always a handful of people to really enjoy working with in every organization, and that we are going to wear the more practical and comfortable MultiCam uniforms and not the stiff Army Combat Uniform we currently endure. Today, I will start a "Gratitude Wall," where among the mail I need to answer and the ink cartridges I need to recycle, I will write or add anything that makes me glad to be alive. I will go to the wall and meditate on something to add regularly, and any time I feel defeat at my shoulder. I will let nothing be too small a cause for thanksgiving. I will see if remembering that God is on the throne and that I have much more than I need to survive will lead to thriving in difficult places.