When my kids play, I see God illustrating resilience. I see my daughter look at the tippy-top of the swing set and it’s as if God says “this is how high you can reach.” I follow her gaze toward the towering branches of a tree and I know she will find a way to get there. She has to start low first. As the sun burnishes her arms, they toughen and fill out as she learns to hold her own weight. Then she swings, climbing hand over hand across the monkey bars at the park.

There are days when discouragement shakes her arms scared, and she needs me to hold her as she monkey crawls across the bars. Sometimes she is too tired, but like a child, she doesn’t recognize fatigue, she just sees the top of the world she hasn’t reached yet.

She comes home from school and tells me about her friend, the gymnast, who can swing and flip and nearly fly over those monkey bars. She wants to do that too, and instead of listening to the dream thief that likes to whisper “you can’t”, she lets her dreams expand. Month after month, she climbs higher, farther. Occasionally she gets stuck in the tree out back and I have to rescue her, but we just laugh and she keeps climbing.

On her last day of school, we meet on the playground. She smiles proud and begins to go from bar to bar, swinging with much more strength that she appears to have on her wiry frame. My heart soars as she conquers every one of them and I think, This is what God made us for—for keeping our eyes on the highest dream, and like the resiliency of a child, we will reach it.