Tenacity of Weasels

There was a time in my life that I thought I knew what my future held. I could see it, and I could almost touch it. And then it vanished. Life became new, uncertain, unfamiliar and without clear purpose.

During this time, I sat one early morning in a cafe, sipping my usual latte, surrounded by the buzz of customers and overwhelmed with all the studying I had to do. Exhausted from many late nights, I opened to my latest assignment and groaned as I read the title, Living Like Weasels, by Annie Dillard. "Weasels? Ridiculous," I thought. And then I began to read one of the most profound things I have ever read. It had to do with the tenacity of weasels. Tears streamed down my face as I read the words.

Weasels are obedient to instinct. They bite their prey at the neck. They either split the jugular vein at the throat or crunch the brain at the base of the skull, and they do not let go. Annie shared a story about a man who shot an eagle out of the sky. The dry skull of a weasel was fixed by the jaws to the eagle's throat. The belief is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and he nearly won. Her reflection was this: We can live any way we want. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender spot and plug into that pulse. Yielding, not fighting. Grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part.

It was in this place that I realized that I was exactly where I needed to be. Sometimes in the midst of what we see as nothing, we find everything. It was time to grasp onto my one necessity, my faith, and not let it go. I needed to stalk my calling, or purpose. The eagle to me represented my faith, and purpose. I decided I would not sit and hide under His wings, but I would soar with Him high wherever He might lead me. He is all that I need. I will refuse to let go, surrendering to wherever He takes me, hanging on with the tenacity of a weasel.