One Word

Sometimes one word says it all.  Below is my favorite poem which is centered around one word.  I heard this poem for the first time in Junior High. Since that time, I have read and reread it many times.  The message gives me hope, it gives me strength, it reminds me life is not absolute,  it reminds me that my future depends on me, it reminds me that I have a choice in how I respond to adverse situations, but most of all it reminds me not to give up.

The  last few weeks have been difficult for me.  Today I made a difficult choice.  A situation arose recently that reopened some old wounds and, as I found myself hurting so much it was almost a physical pain, I began to remember some of the stanza's from this poem.  So, I prayed and then I pulled out my favorite poem to read in it's entirety. 

Lies are like small invisible cracks in a building's foundation.  Eventually, these cracks can compromise the structural integrity of what we worked so hard to build.  Betrayal is a terrible thing and, although I can forgive, I am intelligent enough to realize that  forgetting isn't always wise.  This poem is a reminder that we all face life challenges in one form or another but that is no excuse to give up, to stop believing in myself, to stop believing in truth, or to act with anything less than complete integrity.

If

By Rudyard Kipling

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 on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe 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!