IF YOUR SHIP DOESN'T COME IN, YOU MAY NEED TO ROW OUT TO IT

Greer Garson, the half Scotch-half Irish WWII era movie star, used to say,

“If your ship doesn’t come in, you may need to row out to it.”

And while I can’t speak for her personal life, I am aware of the difficulties she encountered during the course of her professional career.

She experienced several “up’s and down’s” along the way, and her popularity ebbed and flowed. As she entered her 40’s, her selection for film parts waned. Nominated for seven academy awards, she won just once. She was married three times.

If your ship doesn’t come in, you may need to row out to it.

I think it’s often that way with the plans our Creator dreamed for you and me…before He made the worlds. Sometimes the fulfillment of those plans seem to be “slow a-coming” and difficult to accomplish. And the cares of this life can interfere with their accomplishment and overwhelm our attempts to “make it happen.”

Speaking of the delay and difficulty with which we so often contend, as we seek to discover and fulfill God’s will for our lives, hardly anything to which I have been exposed has impacted me quite like an interview with Laura Hillenbrand, the writer of the New York Times bestseller, “Seabiscuit;” (and the literary work upon which the movie by the same title was based).

Pt. 2

Following is the text of that interview:

*How did the illness affect your ability to write this book? Were there long periods of time when you could neither do research nor write? Did you get discouraged at times? What kept you going?

Writing this book was immensely important to me, but my illness made it hard. I had to accept that there would be a large physical price to pay for undertaking this project, and that I would have to pare away the rest of my life to save my strength  for what I wanted to do.

For the four years that I researched and wrote this book, I did virtually nothing else. I devoted everything I had to it. I had my office set up so that there was a refrigerator, cereal boxes, bowls, spoons, and a giant jug of water right by my desk, allowing me to keep on working without wasting energy on fixing meals. I stacked research books in a semicircle on the floor around my chair so I wouldn’t have to get up to get them.

I couldn’t travel to my sources, but found ways around this by making maximum use of the Library of Congress’ interlibrary loan service, the Internet, my fax machine, email and, of course, my telephone. For the most part, my body held together. I worked whenever I had strength, sometimes at odd hours, and I often worked until completely exhausted, and dizzy. There were days when it was almost impossible to move, but I usually found something I still had the strength to do. If I was too dizzy to write, I did interviews. If I was too weak to sift through books, I sat still and wrote.

Pt. 3

Sometimes I worked while in bed, lying on my back and scribbling on a pad with my eyes closed. Though it was hard to do this, there was never a point at which I became discouraged. These subjects were just too captivating for me to ever consider abandoning the project. The price I paid was steep. Within hours of turning in the manuscript, my health collapsed completely. The vertigo returned in force, and I was unable to read or write at all for several months. I also became markedly weaker and was rendered almost entirely homebound again. Well over a year later, I still haven’t completely recovered.

But it was worth it.

As difficult as the illness made the writing and research process, I think I also have it to thank for spurring me into the project. Being sick has truncated my life dramatically, drastically narrowing the possibilities for me. For fifteen years, I have had very little contact with the world. The illness has left me very few avenues for achievement, or for connecting with people. Writing is my salvation, the one little area of my life where I can still reach out into the world and create something that will remain after I am gone. It enables me to define myself as a writer instead of a sick person. Because of this, I felt so immensely powerful motivating me to write this book, and writing it as well as I could.

Pt. 4

God knows, I have experienced some significant difficulties in my pursuit of excellence.

Numerous vocational and geographical fits and starts. Divorce. A mentally ill child. Broken bones. Cancer. Surgeries. Several near misses in the mortality department. Financial failures. The death of parents and friends. Betrayals. Difficulties. Delays.

And I recognize my experiences are in no way singular. We’ve all “been there” in one form or another. There is simply no way to encounter this life without experiencing some level of trial, trouble, and turmoil. But I think the difference is the mindset we choose to adopt and the actions, (or lack thereof) which may (or may not) follow.

As a counselor, I have “sat with” literally thousands of men and women, boys and girls, and like to think I am a fair judge of people. And sadly, I have counseled a myriad of people who wouldn’t walk across the room and retrieve a solution to whatever hinders them, if it were sitting next to my ornamental palm tree.

In 1^st Peter 1:17 we read,

“We serve a God who judges men according to their actions.”

And indeed, we do.

I love what the former president of Wheaton College, Dr. Raymond Edman, had to say on this subject.

   Herein lies the discipline of difficulty: to recognize one's limitations and handicaps; nevertheless, to rise up and do the impossible in spite of them.

To yield to discouragement and difficulty is to be defeated. The handicap, I repeat, can be physical, racial, social, personal in any way; yet the soul that will rise up and follow the Saviour will know life that climbs with Bunyan's Pilgrim the Hill Difficulty, to find on its summit the Palace Beautiful, whose windows face the sun-rising.

Our discipline is to keep on climbing when sight is dim and strength is debilitated, when friends fail and foes are fierce, when handicaps hinder and hardships harry. God has use for the heart that no difficulties can deter!

I previously alluded to what was, perhaps, the actress Greer Garson’s favorite adage.

“If you ship doesn’t come in, you may have to row out to it.” And indeed, she did.

And indeed, sometimes we must.

(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 65. By William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending.

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