The most important, lifelong insights are gained in those most extreme experiences which usually only happen once in a person's lifetime.... if they happen at all. I'm speaking of those totally crushing events which test your every faculty and draw out the very last flicker of your endurance and you feel nothing is left in you with which to survive. But, only then ... and only there, where you have never been before, do those insights open to your conscious understanding, and never leave you. Those are the indelible moments, scared upon your memory, which you thought to be the worst of the worst that could possibly happen to you.
People are limited to their own experiences in comprehending the experiences, tragedy, pain, fear and exposure of others. We cannot even know, with certainty, our own reaction, our own endurance to the extremes beyond which we have never gone. We cannot relate to what has never happened to us if we have nothing with which to compare it. So, we are not qualified to judge those who have suffered testing beyond our own.
I learned the most about myself during the months I spent as a young Marine in the Korean War. The expansion of my insight into myself and people in general began the first moments before we were cast onto the beaches of Inchon. It then broadened with depth every day for many months to a crescendo of hunger, thirst, fear, and debilitating exhaustion to the point that I hoped I would get hit and evacuated or die with honor in the minus 30 degree "below zero" weather. What I felt was not courage but fear ... the easy way out of almost certain death by enemy action, freezing, or capture at a place called Chosin Reservoir in the mountains of North Korea.
What I thought, at the time, was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, was actually one of the best. It turned out to be my pinnacle of fear, pain, and exposure to indescribable testing I would ever know right up to this, my 88th year. During that single, three week battle I gained insights that would get me through hundreds of dark valley's, over a thousand mountains of trial, and across a lifetime of challenge, decision and struggle. So what did I learn?
I learned that a healthy person can endure and survive almost anything ... if they just don't quit. Whatever the testing may be.
I realized later, for the first time, what is meant by the scripture that promises that ... "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" Romans 8:28. One of the greatest lessons of life. "All things" means ALL THINGS. But this promise is qualified by only "them that love God" and are therefore "called according to His purpose", not our own. God had a purpose for me and He has a purpose for you. Seek Him and your purpose will find you. Don't seek God's purpose, peace, happiness, fulfillment, or success: Seek God and those things will find you.... unless you quit. So when a terrible thing happens to you, remember Rom.8:28 and, in time, it will work out for your good and may become the best thing in your life. So Look up ... and don't quit on God's plan for you. RB
Edgar Guest's Poem ... Don't Quit
When Things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and debts are high, And you want to Smile but have to sigh. When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns, As everyone of us sometimes learns, And many a failure turns about, When he might have won if he'd stuck it out, Don't give up though the pace seems slow, You might succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up, When he might have captured the victor's cup. And he learned too late, when the night slipped down, How close he was to the golden crown,
Success is failure turned inside out, The silver tint of clouds of doubt, And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar, So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit, It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.
People are limited to their own experiences in comprehending the experiences, tragedy, pain, fear and exposure of others. We cannot even know, with certainty, our own reaction, our own endurance to the extremes beyond which we have never gone. We cannot relate to what has never happened to us if we have nothing with which to compare it. So, we are not qualified to judge those who have suffered testing beyond our own.
I learned the most about myself during the months I spent as a young Marine in the Korean War. The expansion of my insight into myself and people in general began the first moments before we were cast onto the beaches of Inchon. It then broadened with depth every day for many months to a crescendo of hunger, thirst, fear, and debilitating exhaustion to the point that I hoped I would get hit and evacuated or die with honor in the minus 30 degree "below zero" weather. What I felt was not courage but fear ... the easy way out of almost certain death by enemy action, freezing, or capture at a place called Chosin Reservoir in the mountains of North Korea.
What I thought, at the time, was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, was actually one of the best. It turned out to be my pinnacle of fear, pain, and exposure to indescribable testing I would ever know right up to this, my 88th year. During that single, three week battle I gained insights that would get me through hundreds of dark valley's, over a thousand mountains of trial, and across a lifetime of challenge, decision and struggle. So what did I learn?
I learned that a healthy person can endure and survive almost anything ... if they just don't quit. Whatever the testing may be.
I realized later, for the first time, what is meant by the scripture that promises that ... "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" Romans 8:28. One of the greatest lessons of life. "All things" means ALL THINGS. But this promise is qualified by only "them that love God" and are therefore "called according to His purpose", not our own. God had a purpose for me and He has a purpose for you. Seek Him and your purpose will find you. Don't seek God's purpose, peace, happiness, fulfillment, or success: Seek God and those things will find you.... unless you quit. So when a terrible thing happens to you, remember Rom.8:28 and, in time, it will work out for your good and may become the best thing in your life. So Look up ... and don't quit on God's plan for you. RB
Edgar Guest's Poem ... Don't Quit
When Things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and debts are high, And you want to Smile but have to sigh. When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns, As everyone of us sometimes learns, And many a failure turns about, When he might have won if he'd stuck it out, Don't give up though the pace seems slow, You might succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up, When he might have captured the victor's cup. And he learned too late, when the night slipped down, How close he was to the golden crown,
Success is failure turned inside out, The silver tint of clouds of doubt, And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar, So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit, It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.
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