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,

…Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

 

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 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!”

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

(from The Way of the Wild Heart, Eldredge)

 

Well, I really can’t tell you how much this poem strikes at my heart.  These past few months have included some major battles and I feel like I haven’t been able to hold too strong.  It is my hope that one day I will be able to “get there.”  And, I do believe that with God it IS possible.

So, today, I got back in the saddle again.  Tomorrow, I’ll get back in the saddle, yet again, and see where the King leads me…