Since 2019, the Center for Leadership Excellence, in partnership with COSROW, has been lifting up the voices of lay and clergywomen in ministry through Encouragements—monthly emails designed to inspire, encourage, and offer practical ways for women in ministry to support one another. This month, we’re honored to share words from Grace McGee, pastor of St. Peter’s UMC in Oxford and Hargrove Chapel in Townsville.

Anyone can sign up to receive Encouragements—and the full archive of past emails is available for you to explore. Please share this link with lay and clergywomen in ministry who might be interested.

Resilience? Another Option

I am sure there have been times when you thought, “I’m not going to make it!” In those moments, resilience lifts her head, straightens her back, and, steadying us, she whispers, “Hold on, I got you!” We only recognize her in the aftermath of trials that threatened to overwhelm us. Resilience is the capacity to withstand, adapt to, or recover from adversity. Yet if she only appears during crises, chaos, and oppression, what price does she exact? A resilient woman sacrifices peace, flourishing, and health. When we valorize resilience, are we implicitly endorsing the suffering that makes it necessary?

The psalmist offers a different vision: “When I thought, ‘My foot slips,’ Your steadfast love, O LORD, helped me up. When the cares of my heart are many, Your consolations cheer my soul” (Psalm 94:18–19). God’s sustaining love doesn’t merely restore us to what was—it invites transformation, the real prize. Transformation rewrites our reflexes. What if when trouble comes, we flood our spaces with praise, thanksgiving, love, generosity, kindness, peace, and goodness—especially to ourselves. Rather than just survive and whisper, “I made it”: Dance. Twirl. Shout. “You are good! Your mercy endures forever! Hallelujah!” Celebrate because we just earned another notch for hard-won wisdom.

Think about this: if resilience means “recovery,” are we declaring that our former state was ideal? Only in God’s original creation, the only thing worth returning to is God’s declaration of “it was very good.” Why restore what barely worked? Perhaps our trials have been acts of practicing faith itself. What if, instead of merely withstanding, we ask God for revitalized imaginations that move us beyond survival toward true flourishing?

So, let’s stop celebrating survival and start pursuing transformation. Resilience keeps you standing. Transformation gives you wings. Which will you choose?

In partnership,
Center for Leadership Excellence and the Commission on the Status and Role of Women