The little train sat stalled at the bottom of the mountain. Toys and good food for the children on the other side needed to get over that ridge, and every big, shiny engine that rolled past had a reason it couldn’t help. Too small a job. Too big a hill. Not my problem.
Then came the Little Blue Engine. Nobody expected much from her, but she looked at that mountain, looked at those children waiting on the other side, and she said the only thing that mattered: “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”
Ten years ago, I wrote a post about grit built around that little engine. I want to return to her today, because grit is exactly what a lot of us feel we’re missing. If you’re a parent who feels like life is happening to you instead of through you, if you were raised in church and drifted, if you still call yourself a Christian, but your calendar and your temper tell a different story, if you’re curious about Jesus but the noise around His name has kept you at arm’s length, if you’re a young adult looking at the odds stacked in front of you and wondering whether the American dream still has your name on it, then this one’s for you.
What Grit Actually Is
Grit is unrelenting, long-term tenacity. It’s the willingness to spend every last drop of effort moving something forward, and then to keep spending it until you cross the finish line. The dictionary calls it an indomitable spirit, one that cannot be subdued or overcome.
Gritty people play hurt. They don’t whimper, waver, or quit, not ever. They expect the climb to be difficult, and they believe, to the core of their being, that they can overcome whatever stands in their way. Grit rarely looks impressive from the outside. It just keeps showing up, one more day than the excuse does.
That’s the Little Engine. She willed her way over that mountain by believing she could do it before she’d done it. Climbing, she chanted, “I think I can.” Coming down the other side, having proven it, she sang, “I thought I could.” Grit can be developed, personally and organizationally, and it often starts exactly there: with a decision to think you can.
We Become What We Think About
In 1956, a radio broadcaster named Earl Nightingale recorded a message that became one of the most listened-to recordings in American history: The Strangest Secret. His premise was simple, and it has stuck with me for years. As Nightingale put it, “we become what we think about.” He pointed out that of one hundred men who start even at twenty-five, only a handful end up financially independent by sixty-five, not because the other ninety-five lacked opportunity in the richest land in history, but because they lacked a destination for their thinking. A ship without a mapped course doesn’t drift into port. It drifts onto the rocks.
Nightingale was right about the mechanism. Thought shapes life. That’s one of the two truths I’ve built my own life around, but here’s where I’ve had to grow past where I was ten years ago: thinking you can do something is not the same as knowing why you’re here.
One Nation, and One Life, Under God
Every American schoolchild has said the words. One nation, under God. Two words in that pledge don’t get nearly the reflection they deserve: under God. Not beside Him. Not occasionally consulting Him when the plan falls apart. Under Him. A nation only flourishes when it positions itself under God’s authority, and the men who built this Republic knew it, even with all their flaws. They built a system that assumes its citizens will govern themselves from the inside, because no constitution can do for a people what a surrendered soul does for a person. Self-government starts as soul-government. A person is no different. A marriage is no different. A family is no different.
The Little Engine believed she could, but belief alone doesn’t tell you which mountain to climb, why the cargo matters, or whom you’re really climbing for. That’s not a thinking problem. That’s a positioning problem.
Your Calling Will Find You
Dr. Tony Evans preached a message on Romans 12:1-2 that reframes the whole question of calling, and by extension, the whole question of grit. Paul writes:
“1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2)
Dr. Evans’s insight, put simply, is this: when you are rightly positioned under God, you won’t have to search for your calling. Your calling will find you. However, right positioning asks for two surrenders. God must own all of you, not ninety percent, not just the parts that are convenient on a Sunday morning, and the world must own none of you. You live in it, but you weren’t made for it, and you were never meant to let it potter you into whatever success looks like.
That’s the missing half of “I think I can.” Grit without God is willpower aimed wherever the world happened to point you. Grit under God is a mountain climbed for a reason bigger than yourself, because your calling was never a career path. It’s a customized assignment from your Maker, and it will always cost you something you thought you needed to keep.
Here’s the part I don’t want you to miss. Grace isn’t a one-time transaction that gets you in the door and then steps aside. Once you are endowed with grace, it affects all of your life. It doesn’t stay in a compartment marked “Sunday.” It gets into your marriage, your parenting, your work, and your patience in traffic. One of the places grace shows up loudest is grit. The same grace that saves you is the grace that steadies you on the mountain.
So which wolf are you feeding? The one that says life is happening to you, that the odds are stacked, the marriage is too far gone, the kids are too far off track, the culture is too loud to overcome? Or the one that says, “I think I can,” not because you’ve mustered up enough self-belief to force it, but because you’ve finally surrendered enough of yourself to hear what you were built for?
Here’s what I know. You don’t drift into grit, and you don’t stumble into a calling. You position yourself, body, mind, and will, under God. Then you climb.
A Word to the Young and the Weary
If you’re a young adult reading this, I know the math looks discouraging. The cost of a home, the fractured families you grew up watching, a culture that keeps moving the goalposts on what counts as success. It’s fair to wonder if the American dream still has room for you.
Here’s what I tell my own kids. The dream was never the house or the title. It was the freedom to become whom God built you to be, and that freedom is still yours, whatever the headlines say this week. The odds stacked against you are real. They are also not the final word. The Little Engine didn’t have better odds than the bigger engines that passed her by. She had a bigger reason.
Start small. Start today. Give God fifteen minutes before the world gets its hooks into you. Before the phone, before the inbox, before the noise. Open His Word. If you’re a parent, do it at the table where your kids can see you. Positioning is caught more than it’s taught, and a child who watches a mother or father surrender the first fifteen minutes of the day learns something about grit that no lecture will ever teach. If you don’t know where to begin, that’s exactly why we built The Family Wins Devotional: a few minutes a day, grounded in the New Testament, built for families who want their home running on grace and not on grit alone.
You are not too far gone. Your marriage is not too far gone. Your kids are not too far gone. The mountain in front of you, the one that looks impossible from where you’re standing, was put there for an engine exactly your size, positioned exactly under the God who made you for it.
I think I can. I thought I could. Under God, you already are.
Feed the Good Wolf. 🐺
Inspired by and adapted from: Marc Casciani’s original 2017 essay on grit; Watty Piper’s, The Little Engine That Could; Earl Nightingale’s 1956 recording, The Strangest Secret; and Dr. Tony Evans’s teaching on calling from Romans 12:1-2, The Planning of Life.