[L]et endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.  -James 1:4

No word from the mother ship (of writing prompts) today. I’ve been gearing up for my trip tomorrow: the usual sorts of packing activities, and my practice of setting my home to rights. I like, when I return, to drop my things and simply smile. I’m walking around putting away stacks and tying up loose ends, as much as I can. So today’s prompt found me as I was catching up on my Bible study homework (it was a stack). 

If you hang out in Christian circles for a while, you’ll run across this gently mystic practice where, in the middle of reading a section of the Bible, a phrase or sentence will “find” you. Your eye or mind will snag a little. You’ll loop back to look at it again. Or it will stick with you after you’ve gone on, like an earwig of a song from the radio.

I’m guessing endurance is where I snagged. And full effect. Yesterday in my post I caught myself behaving in Machiavelli mode, choosing the ‘letter’ so I could be exactly successful at this dare without stretching. Until I sat and stared at it, I hadn’t considered that I was avoiding the full effect – neither digging into my brain nor leaving room to extend the daily-blogging streak. I don’t enjoy seeing myself as someone who skirts intent like that. I’ve called myself out, and I am sticking to the intent of the challenge. Which will require some endurance. 

However, I don’t see this blogging dare as a big endurance, the way parenting my intensely independent child has been. My endurance-recognition hits here:

This season I’m standing in – the other side of a year’s work for hire that left me raw, the new silence after teens move away from home, this groping after how to be professional in a field that doesn’t pay – walking through this season has been and is endurance. 

This dare is part of my walk. I guess time will show endurance’s full effect.