Happy Monday…. er, Tuesday. In case you didn’t know, I have been on a medical mission trip this past week to Costa Rica with my preacher son. It’s quite something to be a helper when your adult son has taken on the responsibility of shepherding 23 people to man a free clinic of medical care in a foreign country. My heart is full of words and thoughts of this past week, but my mind has the weight of responsibility and too many tasks to return and settle down to, to let those thoughts and words flow to paper. The opposite of writer’s block, my mental congestion longs for another writer’s pen to provide a voice. So, as my Jake would have Happy Monday’s, here is a poem that came to mind this week while I watched John do what he was called to do and while I sit here and think about what God will ask him to do as he travels his life’s journey..
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
