The following is an article/post that really moved me. It's a story you may know, but the lessons are timeless.
I found a part of myself in Mr. Jackson.
Pain
by Charles R. Swindoll
They called him "Old
Hickory" because of his tenacity and grit. His mother chose "Andrew" on March
15, 1767, when she gave birth to that independent-minded South Carolina rebel.
Wild, quick-tempered, and disinterested in school, Andrew answered the call for
soldiers to resist the British invasion at age thirteen. Shortly thereafter, he
was taken prisoner. Refusing to black an enemy officer's boots, he was struck
with a saber—Andrew's introduction to pain.
Although he bore the
marks of the blow for the rest of his life, Andrew's fiery disposition never
waned. A fighter to the core, he chose to settle arguments in duels and lived
most of his days with two bullets painfully wedged in his body. After he
distinguished himself on the battlefield, his name became a national synonym for
valor and stern persistence. When politics nodded in his direction, "Old
Hickory" accepted the challenge: first the Senate, then nomination for
President. The shadow of pain appeared again in another form as he lost a narrow
race with John Quincy Adams.
Four years later,
however, he ran again . . . and won! But pain accompanied the victory. Two
months before he took office he lost his beloved wife, Rachel. Grief-stricken,
the President-elect pressed on. Even as he was being sworn into office as our
nation's seventh President, he fought the anguish of a raging fever caused by an
abscess in the lung.
Some time later, one
of the bullets within him had to be surgically removed. He endured that
operation—done without anesthetic—in typically courageous fashion. Even his
political career was painful. A nasty scandal split his cabinet, and critics
clawed at him like hungry lions. Although he stood firm for many months, the
telling signs of pain began to manifest themselves. He was one of the few men
who left office, however, more popular than when he came. "For once, the rising
was eclipsed by the setting sun," wrote a contemporary sage. And it was pain,
more than any other single factor, which drew the qualities of greatness out of
Andrew Jackson.
Pain humbles the
proud. It softens the stubborn. It melts the hard. Silently and relentlessly, it
wins battles deep within the lonely soul. The heart alone knows its own sorrow
and not another person can fully share in it. Pain operates alone; it needs no
assistance. It communicates its own message whether to statesman or servant,
preacher or prodigal, mother or child. By staying, it refuses to be ignored. By
hurting, it reduces its victim to profound depths of anguish. And it is at that
anguishing point that the sufferer either submits and learns, developing
maturity and character, or resists and becomes embittered, swamped by self-pity,
smothered by self-will.
I have tried and I
cannot find, either in Scripture or history, a strong-willed individual whom God
used greatly until He allowed him to be hurt deeply.
It was just such a
person who wrote these words for all to read:
Guests
Pain
knocked upon my door and said
That she had come to stay,
And though I
would not welcome her
But bade her go away,
She entered in.
Like my own
shade
She followed after me,
And from her stabbing, stinging sword
No
moment was I free.
And then one day another knocked
Most gently at my
door.
I cried, "No, Pain is living here,
There is not room for
more."
And then I heard His tender voice,
"'Tis I, be not afraid."
And
from the day He entered in,
The difference it made!
—Martha Snell
Nicholson
Excerpted from Come Before Winter and Share My Hope, Copyright ©
1985, 1994 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by
permission.
