Some encouraging things I found today... and needed.

I found this encouraging because I am very much the amateur at this art of writing.  Yes, I've done work in the academic world, have invested nearly half my life in preparations in it.  But the satisfaction present in that world when compared to creating art that might actually impact a world in search of meaning and hope... it just doesn't compare, sorry.  Teaching is wonderful, and fun, and rewarding in its own way.  I love it when student "spark" to knew discoveries about their world or about their ability to become better communicators.  Those are choice moments, to be sure.  But I don't get to share the real hope in life with them.  I don't get to point them to Someone greater.  I don't get to be the "beggar sharing bread (of Life) with another beggar."  With the "art" of authoring God-honoring fiction there is such potential.  And even though I'm such an amateur at this... I don't want to give up.  I don't want to stop in the face of publishing doldrums, complicated and greedy publishing houses... the list goes on and on. 

Marilyn Vos Savant nailed it with this statement.  Her advice?  Choose to view current conditions that impede your progress as temporary.  Persevere through them.  Only giving up makes them permanent, and only you can do that.

Actually, I find my decades-old military training coming into play.  The US Navy was nearly a joke when it came to esprit de corps (high morale, sense of higher purpose that drives people's performance into the upper levels).  But there are pockets of it within the USN.  Some in very, very high concentrations.  Nearly Olympic proportions.  That experience is not lost on me.  It was not my life-choice as a professional path -- I became a college professor instead, married a beautiful woman of the faith, and raised three excellent children who are successfully making their way into adulthood.  I remember telling Lt. Fitzgerald, nicknamed the "Terminator" for his build and intensity, that I had other goals in mind, some that included ministry and possibly the mission field.  He laughed, and probably with good reason.  But I chose a path that allowed me to do a host of things I wouldn't have otherwise been able to do had I stuck with Fitzgerald's Teams.  And yet I so appreciate the raw tenacity and brute determination trained into us there on the grinder.  It was entirely worth it.  And now, toward the later part of my life, I believe it will come back to me in great dividends.  I wish I could thank the men involved in that training.

By far the greatest metaphor for achievement in my life has been that of mountaineering.  I often refer to my "Mont College" experience of getting the Bachelor's degree.  It was a tough thing to nail down.  Then came the Credential (teaching), the Master's degree, and finally the Doctorate.  This was all done while married and raising three children, one during each of the three degrees.  Not easy.  "The only easy day was yesterday," someone has said.  Most married law school students complete their degree at the expense of their marriage.  The same is true of graduate school in other areas.  Three colleagues in my cohort in grad school were divorced during or immediately after we finished (in a graduating class of perhaps ten).  It is a tough row to hoe.  And it can cost a person terribly.  I wasn't about to let go of the one to grasp the other; accomplishing the one WAS THE REASON for doing the other.  When climbing a mountain, and I have climbed the highest in the continental US, you make many stops along the way.  Some of the most excruciating are the one near the top.  Your lungs ache.  Your body fights back with pain in numerous places because of the effort.  It costs you.  But you must NEVER GIVE UP.  If all you can do in the moment is focus on that moment, breathe, and put one foot in front of the other, then that's WHAT you do.  And you keep doing it.  Until you reach the peak. 




Success is a habit.  Of mind.  Of life.  Of the body.