I remember sitting in church as a little girl while my dad taught Sunday school.

That day he was talking about persistence. About not quitting. About how sometimes determination matters more than ability.

Then he told a story about me…

We were at a playground when I was about five years old. There was a set of monkey bars. The real kind. A long horizontal ladder where you had to swing hand over hand to reach the other side. From my height, it looked enormous.

I wanted to do it.

My dad lifted me up to the first bar.

One hand over.
Next hand over.

I fell.

He lifted me up again.
One hand over.
Next hand over.

I fell again.

We repeated this over and over. Every attempt ended the same way. My hands slipped, my legs dropped, and I landed in the dirt.

Finally my dad said,
“Susie, you’re too little. You can’t do this.”

I remember standing up, brushing my hands off, jaw set and teeth clenched.

“I. Will. Do. It.”

No drama. No tears. Just a decision.

He lifted me up again.

One bar.
Then another.
Then another.

And somehow, after all the falling, I made it to the end.

At the time it was just a playground victory. I didn’t realize I had just taken a stance I would hold for the rest of my life.

Looking back, that moment wasn’t about monkey bars.
It was about identity.

Not “I can do it.”
Not “I’ll try.”
Not “maybe later.”

“I will do it.”

There have been many bigger monkey bars since then.

Nursing school. Hard jobs. Exhaustion. Situations where quitting would have made perfect sense. Moments where someone kindly and logically explained why something wasn’t possible.

Sometimes they were right about the difficulty.
But they were wrong about the decision.

Because somewhere in my wiring is a five-year-old standing in the dirt, looking up at something too big and saying the same words again.

I. Will. Do. It.

Persistence isn’t loud. It rarely looks heroic. Most of the time it just looks like getting lifted back up, grabbing the first bar again, and refusing to negotiate with gravity.

You don’t always succeed immediately.
You don’t always succeed gracefully.
But over time, the one who decides not to quit outlasts the one who doubts.

I didn’t understand the importance of that moment then.

I do now.

Sometimes the greatest advantage you can have in life is not talent, confidence, or perfect timing.

Sometimes it is simply deciding once that quitting isn’t part of the plan.

Life keeps changing the height of the bars, but the answer stays the same.

“I will do it.”

Funny thing. Years later Nike tweaked that childhood declaration from “I will do it” to “Just do it” and built a billion-dollar slogan out of it.

LOL… But hey… who’s counting.