"When we go to the gym, we don't blame the weights for being too heavy, we use them to make us stronger. In that way we can use adversity to become more capable and competent in life."
~ Wes
Hopper
We recognize physical weights as healthful strength-building tools. What if we saw adversities as tools that help us develop inner strength?
When I was a young child, I loved hearing the stories my father's parents told me about the "Old Country." Some of them resembled fairy-tales. You know the kind. Ordinary children face great dangers using their wits and courage. Even
if they got help from a fairy godmother or other magical being, we saw their hope, strength and goodness.
My favorite real-life story was the one about my (then) 12-year-old grandfather and his (then) 14-year-old brother being left behind in Austria-Hungary when their parents came to the "New Country." My great-grandparents could only afford passage for themselves and children who were older and could work
and the young ones who needed parental care. It was understood that John and Joseph had the ability to fend for themselves until enough money could be earned to send to them.
When I heard that story I cried for my grandfather and his brother.
"Didn't they love you, Grandpa?"
Many times he explained that his parents did what they had to do
to better the whole family. And they trusted John and Joseph to care for themselves for a time.
With pride my grandfather told me how he and his brother herded pigs for two years, slept in barns, got help here and there and finally journeyed through Europe to the boat that brought them to Ellis Island.
My grandmother had similar stories. Like my grandfather, she told her hardship stories with pride.
I wasn't able to put it in words
when I was six, eight or ten, but I can say now that in my grandparents I saw enormously-developed inner strength, which I admired.
Let's recall and appreciate a time when our strength was developed by adversity. See the beauty too.
With gratitude,
Charlene
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