I was planning to write about the first element of my Creed today as I promised last week. But I’ve been prompted to
give you this article instead.
I assume one or more of you need this message. I try to follow my promptings (that’s also one of my creed elements).
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Hard Times Can Lead Us to the Good Life By David DeFord
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In two years I suffered many serious challenges. At the beginning of this period I endured an intense job
challenge. For twelve long months I labored night and day under terrible strain. Then, in a sweep of all senior
management, I lost my job. A few months later my father passed away after years of suffering from emphysema
and lung cancer.
Then, my wife underwent serious and difficult surgery. Next, my volunteer service to the refugees from Sudan took
several difficult turns, including a week in which Kathy and I went into hiding because of serious death threats.
The stork delivered our grandson Wyatt seven weeks too early. Our precious little guy remained in intensive care
for weeks. And lastly, I fell down my front steps and suffered a serious spiral fracture in my foot.
Everyone endures trials. Usually they come less rapid-fire, but we all suffer from life’s challenges. Business failures,
wayward children, sicknesses, injuries, death of loved ones, or financial ruin can strike anyone. These challenges can tear
us down or they can build us up. We choose.Why do we face adversity? What can we gain from our difficulties? The most
pertinent answers to these questions spring from deep spiritual principles. But this isn’t the forum to discuss them.
Hard times challenge everyone. But why?
To Help Us Appreciate the Better Times
Normally, we think little of a tall glass of ice water and a cool shower. But after
mowing grass for two hours in the hot August sun we crave them. Just as hot summer
days help us appreciate the cooler days of autumn, so failure and rejection help us
appreciate our later successes.
· John Grisham couldn’t get his first novel, A Time to Kill, published.
So he self-published and sold the books out of his car trunk.
· Louis L’Amour received 350 rejections before his
first sale. He later went on to have more than 200 million
copies in print.
· Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book was rejected
by twenty-seven publishers. Mary Higgins Clark received
forty rejections,
· Jack London 600, and Alex Haley received one rejection per week for four years.
I feel sure these early rejections made sweeter their million dollar contracts.
To Build Our Strength and Endurance
· Beginning runners strain at jogging a mere mile. But after months of marathon distance training
they can run fifteen miles as an easy day.
· Our trials can help us build our strength and endurance so that we can endure the later
challenges in our lives, and they help us propel ourselves to greater achievement.
· Consider Roger Bannister.
As a young man, he suffered the crippling effects of polio and was
told that we would never walk. By drawing on this adversity he pushed himself to greatness; he
became the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile. His affliction propelled him to the most noted
track feat in history.
To Teach Us Valuable Life Lessons
· . From our misfortunes we can learn such lessons as:.
· We reap what we sow
· . We must honor our promises
· . The good life is more than gaining wealth, and
· . Leave plumbing to the professionals (I speak from personal experience on this one.)
To Help Us Gain Greater Empathy for Others
After experiencing many of life’s challenges, we feel more understanding and empathy in the trials of
those around us. We seek to help them through their difficulties, and we can better comfort and encourage
them. We can convert our hard times into the good life. We need only learn from our challenges and turn
them to our advantage.
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Related Quotes
Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful
life is in every way and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
- Isak Dinesen
Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
- Francis Bacon
Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.
Malcolm Forbes
When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door,
that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Most successful people can identify one minute, one moment, where their lives changed, and it usually
occurred in times of adversity.
- Willy Jolie
The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations get into his shell. He does not like them.
But when he cannot get rid of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a
chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have
to be a pearl of patience, but, anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and love to do it.
- Henry Emerson Fosdick
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