Crutches

My beautiful daughter had an injury recently and needed crutches to get around for weeks afterward. Actually, she needed more than that, but her crutches were the last thing to go. It wasn't easy to give them up either. At first they were essential and then they became less important physically but more and more important psychologically.

Eliminating your crutches is not as easy as you might think. There is a fine line between giving them up at the correct time and giving them up too early, which might cause you to develop a limp that you could carry with you the rest of your life.

We all have something we use as a crutch. When we are in trouble a crutch may be just the thing to help us out; that’s not entirely bad, but we need to get rid of the crutch at the right time so we can learn to walk on our own again.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but nothing is meant to be our perpetual crutch. In reality, the plan is for us to eventually be able to stand on our own intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. We will never be able to handle all our own problems, but we must learn to be normal to the fullest extent possible. We are all dependent to a certain extent but we must not be permanently debilitated by our situation or circumstances. The goal for each of us is that we would be complete and whole as an individual.

The danger is in not finding the balance between trying to go it alone in life and ending up limping through it, or never trying to walk on our own and not maturing to become that which we were intended to be.

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” ~ H. L. Hunt

War of the Mind

“My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories.” ~ Bjorn Borg

I have a very simple message for you today – Don’t quit! Everyone I have known who has experienced great success over a long period of time, has one characteristic in common; persistence. You don’t have to be the best at what you do. If you stick with it, you will find you outlast them all and win simply by attrition. The fact is that everyone else will quit and you will be the last one standing. You must win the war of the mind.

I would rather win because I am the smartest, best, and most talented, but someone else can beat me in every one of these categories. However, I can decide that I will never quit, never stop and never give in. That is my choice and I am committed to finishing what I begin. How about you? You may not always make the right decision but you can make your decision right if you will stick with it and perfect it until it is just what it needs to be.

How often have you quit just as victory was within your grasp, but you didn’t realize it so you gave up and missed your dream? We will never know the answer to that particular question, but we can rest assured that we did not miss our mark if we never quit and learn to press on despite the discouragement and pressure to withdraw.

I was never the best or most talented so early in my life I had to decide that I would be the most committed and it has paid off handsomely. Billy Graham is my hero. He has addressed more people face to face than any man who has ever lived. One of my greatest successes was to lead the largest public gathering Billy Graham ever held in North America. We were under-staffed, under-funded and had no real momentum going for us. I will never forget that we held a rally the week before our meeting was to take place and less than 1200 people showed up! We were in a jam and our backs were to the wall but we did not give up and a week later we had 250,000 people crowding into New York City’s Central Park. Our meeting was a record for Billy and a personal high point for me. The next day, an aerial photo of the gathering appeared on the front page of the New York Times - above the fold. We had realized our dream – and then some.

You are a winner if you never quit. No matter what the circumstances or the emotion screaming for you to give in, don’t do it! If you go down, don’t let it be because you held back or second-guessed the outcome. Give it all you have and push to the end. Your victory is at hand!

“Persistence is the ability to force your desired outcome by sheer strength of will and determination.”