Unfortunately, that computer broke. I was somehow able to salvage my word documents via flash drive and plugged them onto my personal laptop. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have Microsoft Word on the laptop, and so was not able to read any of the documents I had saved since there were no compatible programs to open them up. It was pretty disappointing.
Until...
A few months ago, I succeeded in downloading Microsoft 2010 onto my laptop, due to the fact that I needed it for school and a powerpoint for a youth lesson that I was preparing at the time. So I've actually been able to open up the old documents and never even knew it until a few minutes ago when clicking around on my desktop.
What I found were memorable papers from senior year, a half-written youth lesson, wonderful quotes from a particular book called Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger, a book that I'd begun writing about my time in Nicaragua... it was a treasure trove!
And then I opened up the word document with the poem Carrie had shared, well over a year ago. And after reading it, I decided that I wanted to share it too. Because today, a group of people and I began a 20-week class called Living Waters. It's for those who are sexually and/or relationally broken. It originally began as a class for homosexuals, expanded for the sexually broken, expanded more for the relationally broken, and then it was pretty much decided that ah, what the heck, EVERYONE could use some Living Waters.
Because some of us need healing. Some of us REALLY need healing. Some of us want to know how to relate to others better. Some of us just want to hear the Lord better. And just about all of us aren't satisfied with the way our lives are, and have decided that we want more of what God has for us.
Anyways, we were told that the next four weeks of the course are the most difficult, and to stick with it. I can already tell it's not going to be easy... I've heard quite a few comments on how hard it is to discover just how broken you really are and to muster up the strength to come back to another class and be broken open again. Living Waters is known for being a pretty intense course.
Needless to say, I'm a little morbidly fascinated at how things will go.
So I find it to be excellent timing that I found this poem right at the beginning of the class. It's pretty encouraging to me, and even if you aren't going through something absolutely gut-wrenching at the moment, it's still beautiful. And it will probably be all the more frustrating and beautiful when things do get tough.
I already have the ominous feeling that sometime in the next four weeks, I may come back to this post and promptly attempt to delete this post and pretend it never happened. If you're reading this, you're obligated to not let that happen.
And the poem is this...
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 the debts are high,
And you want to
smile, but you 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 every one of us
sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
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 the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.
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