Hold Your GroundHold Your Ground

        As I walk around the ancient log cabin I am drawn to this old walnut tree.  As I look at the walnuts that litter the ground my mind travels back in time to another walnut tree.  My grandmother (blinded at birth) had a tree just like the one I stand before today.  I can remember helping her gather the earthbound walnuts, cracking, shelling and eventually eating them.  She loved her walnut tree; it did not look like much and offered very little shade, but it had qualities she could easily see.

        Her sightless eyes taught me how to locate the hiding walnuts, she could crack them better than I could and her arthritic fingers could shell them quicker than I could eat them.  She was an amazing woman!  Last nights storm shook the walnut tree’s limbs pretty hard, liberating many nuts that were attached the night before.  Today they are scattered beneath the twisted branches of this gnarled tree.  As I survey the fallen walnuts I am suddenly drawn to these three which are still attached and defiantly clinging to their branch. 

        The more I look at this persistent trio the more I admire them.  They have a lot going for them and I am convinced that we could learn a lot from a few determined nuts.  Perhaps their most significant lesson is the importance of stick-ability; hanging on when everybody else lets go.  Think about it, who can minimize the importance of sticking to your job until one of you is finished.  Persistence, determination and perseverance pay great dividends to those willing to hang on a little longer.

        Let us realize that a great tree is only a little nut that held its ground.  One of the major determining factors of true greatness is hanging on after others have let go.  Happiness is a choice; choose to stick to something good today and hold on tight.

Something to think about:

• Enjoy what you can; endure what you must.
• He who cannot endure tough times will not see good times.
• When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
• Don’t pray for an easier life; pray to be a stronger person.
• Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
• The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.
• The best time to hold on is when you reach the place where the average person gives up.
• Nothing great was ever done without much enduring.

Thankful for patient love and enduring friends

By Rickey Moore

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