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Sadly, after spending several hours editing and revising the original chapter from my hard copy book, I inadvertently pushed a few wrong keys at just the right moment and accidentally deleted the entire post!
Then, to my irritation and dismay, my efforts to undo and redo proved fruitless—every last word I had typed had vanished—and I was left staring at a completely blank page.
Thousands of carefully crafted words gone in an instant.
It was pretty annoying.
I'm sure you have experienced something similar in your life or career, so you know the feeling... the pit that forms in your stomach and the sinking feeling of frustration, helplessness, and loss that accompanies being robbed of something that was uniquely yours—and the sickening knowledge that you will never get it back; you simply have start all over again—from scratch.
It's not a fun place to find oneself.
Not wanting to spend half the night redoing it all in time for publication, I decided to publish one of my favorite SAL poems this week instead. I was aiming to publish this post within the week anyway, so I'll just reverse the two blogs and publish Chapter 2 of Psalms of Life next Wednesday after I spend another 3-5 hours editing, revising, and proofreading it for re-publication.
The poem I would like to share in today's post is entitled: Be Strong.
It was written by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, an American writer and clergyman who resided in the northeastern United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. Despite being a skilled writer and successful preacher (he also wrote the lyrics to the popular Christian hymn, This is My Father's World), Babcock had a hard life. Both of his children died in infancy and he struggled with what we know of today as clinical depression, a condition for which he was once hospitalized in his early thirties.
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| Maltbie Davenport Babcock 1858-1901 |
Adversity befalls all of us in this life. Sometimes it comes on a large scale in the form of death, divorce, despair, or some other disaster. Other times it visits us as more of a petty annoyance—like the loss of my blog post I had spent several hours working on the past week.
Whether we are facing temptation, depression, discouragement, anxiety, rejection, temporary failure, illness, or loss—on a grand scale or in a minor moment—there is no shortage of opportunities to "Be STRONG" throughout our lives.
Just as strengthening our physical muscles requires lifting heavy weights and engaging in other physically strenuous exercise, gaining strength in any other area of our life requires practice, endurance, and the will and resolve to fight through pain until we have realized a given objective.
We must Be STRONG!
How we respond to life's opportunities and adversities will determine both our short-term results and our long-term destiny. While it is true that outer strength and inner fortitude are not always sufficient to carry us through our darkest trials and deepest crucibles—sometimes we must seek out and rely on help from that Higher Power and/or others to get us through—self-action leaders must still do their best to "Be Strong" as individuals. It is our duty to do so. And while practice doesn't always make perfect, it does make progress, and progress leads us to become stronger by degrees over time.
Despite it all, self-action leaders must choose to Be STRONG anyway.
Self-Action Leadership is STRENGTH personified.
I have always been—and always will be—deeply inspired by the moving words of Babcock's poem. While he himself ultimately succumbed to demons that proved too much for him, I am sure he did the best he could under the difficult circumstances he faced. Perhaps he would have made it through had he lived in a day-and-time when there were more (and better) resources to help him through the horrific throes of clinical depression.
From the little I know of him, Babcock was a man of great inner strength, endurance, fortitude, faith, and resolve, which is precisely the kind of man I strive to be—the sort of fellow who practices what he preaches, come what may. The kind of man who is both kind and STRONG.
May we do likewise, ever affirming the two stirring words that make up this famous poem's title...
Be Strong
Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle—face it; 'tis God's gift.
Be strong!
Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?"
And fold the hands and acquiesce—oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.
Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not—fight on! To-morrow comes the song.
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 322nd Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 147th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 322 FF Blog Articles
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL QUOTES
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS
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Tune in NEXT Wednesday for another article on a Self-Action Leadership related topic.
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