Resiliency
Posted Thu, 01/27/2011 - 5:52am by Dr. Carolyn Tennant
Read Romans 15:1-6.
I had purchased a book on the history of the Wisconsin region where we were vacationing and found the reading to be fascinating. The area's history had produced stories of human courage and ingenuity.
As I leisurely rambled through the pages of the book, I found myself alternately laughing, holding my breath in suspense, and shaking my head with incredulity. The truth that struck me most deeply was the endurance and resilience of those first pioneers. They held up under pressures and hardships that were amazing.
In 1864, on New Year's Day, one young man got lost in a blinding snowstorm after visiting his girlfriend on a northern island for Christmas. He went several days without food, sleep, or heat in his arduous fight for survival. Being extremely resourceful, he carried out this tedious work with valor.
At one point, he fell into the lake and got pulled under the ice. After a heroic struggle, he managed to resurface but couldn't get back onto the fragile ice. So, according to the account, "he stayed in the freezing water, using his ice-encased arms and hands as sledge-hammers to smash the thin ice and open a passage. He slowly moved forward, like an animated iceberg, half swimming, half crawling, by help of his elbows. This incredible struggle against the merciless elements continued for hours. Time after time he believed himself lost, but again and again he conquered, smashing, plunging, rolling, and swimming with the temperature at forty degrees below zero.
This man's rescuers made the horrible mistake of plunging his limbs into kerosene, and he ended up with months of pain and the loss of his extremities before he could get to a doctor. Later, with the help of artificial limbs, he continued his business of drilling wells and reportedly had remarkable dexterity in handling the tools of his trade, never asking for favors because of his physical handicap (Holand 76).
As such stories were recounted in the book, one after the other, I considered the tremendous endurance that characterized those early settlers. They never gave up, lifting their chins and facing adversity with resolve.
And nowadays? We are apt to quit when the going gets a little tough. People bail out of jobs when circumstances become difficult or out of marriages when the relationship requires too much work. They tend to carry the same problems with them from place to place, never resolving issues or growing through the difficulties.
A little endurance, like those hearty pioneers, wouldn't hurt any of us. Let's toughen up and use our limbs as ice picks!
Work cited: Holand, H.R. Old Peninsula Days. Minocqua, WI: North Word Press, Inc., 1959.