I don’t know, but I think what I’ve got is something slightly resembling… GUMPTION!

Kate Winslet’s Iris, The Holiday (2006)

The first time I heard this word “gumption,” it intrigued me.  I didn’t quite understand what it meant, but I really liked it and I wanted to exemplify it.  I wanted to live it and I wanted to be it.

Kate Winslet personified it while playing the role of Iris Simpkins on “The Holiday,” my favorite film of all times.  Iris was the reason I fell in love with this film.  For years, she had been miserably in love with her ex-boyfriend whom she learns has just gotten engaged to another woman.  In a moment of impulse, she decides to swap homes with another woman, Cameron Diaz’ Amanda,  who lives in LA, for the holiday.  Iris wants to get away from what she knows for a season to forget the pain she thinks she’s leaving behind.  However, the pain follows her.  The wound is within her as she searches for healing.  While living in Amanda’s mansion, she has a “meet-cute” encounter with a Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter, Arthur Abbott, who inspires her to acquire this “gumption.”  Using screenwriting metaphors, Arthur exhorts Iris to claim back the “leading lady role” and stop acting like “the best friend.”  Iris is the leading lady of her own life and must find this “gumption” Arthur keeps talking to her about.  When her ex-boyfriend shows up at her door in LA, Iris has had enough!  She stands up to him in TRUTH and with, you guessed it… GUMPTION!

I did the ultimate sacrifice, I resigned… with gumption!

I don’t know how many times I’ve searched for its definition, but my soul finally knows what gumption is; it knows it because I was able to acquire it yesterday when I obeyed the Lord and resigned from my job. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me, gumption is bolder than boldness.

For seven years, I gave my service to a place I called my second home; it was the place I met and married the love of my life; the place where it saw us grow from a family of two to a family of three (four, if you count our super cat, Jack Bauer). It wasn’t just a job for me because working at The Grill meant seeing my family everyday. The staff was never a group of employees to me, they are people who are as beautifully flawed as I am, trying to do this thing called life as we all are and we were living that life together.  The idea of leaving this place, this family, never entered my mind; partly, because I didn’t know what I would do outside of it.  Then, when it did, I began to fear the thought of leaving and what would follow.  I feared because of the perception it would leave in people’s minds.  I’ve seen the faces before when people leave.  The first thought is “What did ____ do?”  “Was ____ living in sin?”  “Did ____ get fired?”  “Was ____ asked to step down?”  Because every decision to leave ministry has to be equated to scandal…

I thought I was doing ministry, but my service to the Lord became service to men.  I struggled; I struggled because this place became my everything, it was an idol in my life.  At times I placed it before my husband, but then my son became the next victim to my obsession.  I knew in my heart the place could improve and be near perfect, but there isn’t such a thing as the perfect workplace.  Injustice doesn’t only exist in the world.  Injustice isn’t just what happened in Dallas or Orlando; in Turkey or Brussels. Injustice can also be found at your own home, it can be found in your church and in our workplace; and when you get to work in a church, trust me, there will be injustice.  There’s always going to be someone you don’t want to work with or work for, but I carried on out of respect to my calling.  I wanted to bring forth the solution to make the place as perfect as it could be.  But all the rules and the training packets couldn’t provide that; in fact, they became another idol.  I became consumed with wanting to fix all the problems; but somehow the Lord showed me in my desire to do this, I was becoming part of the problem. 

The love I had for this place I called my home had been replaced by anger.  The love I claimed to have for its people became one more frustration because “they” couldn’t follow the guidelines all the time. The love I had for ministry became fear of losing what was never mine in the first place.  I claimed it as my “baby,” as my possession, but it ended up possessing me.

Like Iris, I was obsessively in love with my “baby,” but the Lord used this story of Abraham to remind me to keep faith.  Abraham is my favorite Bible character because he is the one I relate to the most.  God always identified him as “the Father of Faith,” even when he lacked it.  But this story, Abraham pursued faith even though he must have wondered if he was crazy for doing what he was about to do.

So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.

Genesis 22:6-8

I Won’t Let You Go, by Switchfoot (from Where The Light Shines Through)

When it feels like surgery
And it burns like third degree
And you wonder what is it worth?
When your insides breaking in
And you feel that ache again
And you wonder
What’s giving birth?

[Pre-Chorus]
If you could let the pain of the past go
Of your soul
None of this is in your control

[Chorus]
If you could only let your guard down
If you could learn to trust me somehow
I swear, that I won’t let you go
If you could only let go your doubts
If you could just believe in me now
I swear, that I won’t let you go
I won’t let you go

[Verse 2]
When your fear is currency
And you feel that urgency
You want peace but there’s war in your head
Maybe that’s where life is born
When our façades are torn
Pain gives birth to the promise ahead

[Outro]
There ain’t no darkness strong enough that could tear you out from my heart
There ain’t no strength that’s strong enough that could tear this love apart
Never gonna let you go
Never gonna let you go

No I won’t let you go