Perserverance

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Hebrews 12:1

Things don't always go exactly as we plan it.  Trips to the grocery store usually end up with at least one item or two that wasn't on the list.  Projects at work sometimes take a different turn than we were expecting.  Our plans for our children are the same way.  We have all these big goals and ideas in our mind of where we want our children to be by the time they turn 18.  Sometimes they work out the way we think but then other times life gets in the way of our plans.   Cancer or some other disease breaks into our perfectly knit plan.  Drugs or just plan old disobedience breaks the ties we worked so diligently to build.  It can cause us to want to give up.  Perseverance through these times and a true focus on what God wants us to do is the key to getting through life's ups and downs and twists and turns.  
A friend of mine recently lost his child after a few months of being able to hold their precious miracle.   Born with "defects" they knew he was only with them for a short time.  He recently posted he was having a rough day.  We gathered around him in prayer and he said he needed to persevere through this storm.  That the grace of God was bigger than his sorrow.  
Our children struggle with these ups and downs to.  They even at young ages have dreams.  We as adults sometimes forget this and try to give them our dreams.   It takes time to allow them to live out their dreams.  It takes patience as we watch them fail and it takes a caring spirit to help them stand back up and try again.    The video below is of this.   It shows what perseverance can achieve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1D2YuNnpqk