Lost and Found

Formula for Success

When you want a thing bad enough

To go out and fight for it,

To work day and night for it,

To give up your peace, your sleep and your time for it,

If only the desire of it makes you aim strong enough

Never to tire of it.

If life seems all empty and useless without it

And all that you dream and scheme is about it,

If gladly you'll sweat for it, fret for it, plan for it,

Pray with all your strength for it.

If you'll simply go after the thing you want

With all your capacity,strength and sagacity,

Faith hope and confidence, stern tenacity,

If neither poverty nor cold nor famish nor gaunt

Nor sickness nor pain of body and brain

Can turn you away from the aim that you want

If dogged and grin, you besiege and beset it,

You Get It.

Vaughn J. Featherstone

It seems that when you loose something that was a part of you, you find who you are underneath. Prior to being laid off I was all about getting home and sitting on my butt and enjoying the kids and wife with no real plan for change. Well that has changed a lot; a real lot. What I learned on the road and the life lessons that God has given me have prepared me for this and I didn’t even see it coming.

Alas learning and applying are two different things. We can learn how to drive through a training course and books all we want but until we get out there and risk it (even a little) we will never know what driving is about. The Lord knows that I talk a big game and am a great motivator but when it comes to motivating myself, I really need to listen to myself and go and DO IT. When Vaughn wrote that poem, I get the sense that he had applied the very things that he was inspired to write. He wanted to be close to God and there he was at a pulpit showing what had got him there. We should take that same spirit of go get it and become what we want. Life will get in the way but either you can use life as a crutch to pull you to your goal or complain that it is a weight to pull you down away from your goal.

Do you remember the movie Mulan? In it Mulan (now known as Ping) was asked to climb a pole to the top with two heavy weights on each hand. The Captain Shang demanded that they use those weights as a tool to get there. One represented strength and the other discipline, both were needed to get to the top.

In our lives I think that we are asked to carry the same weights and from it we will become the butterfly or swan that we were meant to be but some of us find it too hard and quit too early. We are not ugly ducklings or caterpillars for ever. The opportunity is always there, its a matter of finding who you are deep inside and pulling yourself from what you learned in training and applying it to what you want. Training is over for some of us and for others its just beginning. It is up to us to know where we are with the Lord and apply what we have learned and then go and get it!

So now back to the title that this article is written about. I think that we sometimes are lost or have lost something that we thought were a big part of us but its like a diamond in the rough, when what you thought was part of you is taken away you will see what you truly are. We have all the time in the universe but what are we doing with it? We should strive to acquire what we want and what we are so that when we show the Lord our talents at the end of our lives we will show that we doubled them. We are not lost; to the Lord we are exactly where we need to be but if you think that your life needs to change take time to assess your assets and see what you need to do to change your course and use the Lord as your compass (but that's for another time). Have a great week brothers and sisters. Oh and Merry Christmas!

Vaughn J. Featherstone's image.