"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't
see the whole staircase." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them
that your strength lies." ~Mother Teresa
"Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the
power of reason to believe." ~Voltaire
"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."
~Plato
My 11 year old son inspired me with a quote that he came up
with: "Have faith that it will be a good day. Have faith that there will
be fun and easy times, but when there is a trial, God has not left you, he is
simply teaching you life." I believe that there are circumstances
in life that we cannot control, but I also believe that there are many things
that we can control and working within the space of what we can control brings
more freedom and success.
In 1952 Florence May Chadwick attempted a 26 mile rough
water swim between Catalina Island and the California coastline. After about 15
hours of swimming, a thick fog set in. Florence began to doubt her ability and
if she could complete the swim successfully and told her mother who was in a
nearby boat that she didn't think she could make it. She swam for another hour
but the fog was keeping her from seeing her destination and she asked to be
pulled out. As she sat in the boat she found that she had stopped swimming only
a mile away from her destination. Two months later Florence tried again, but
this time was different. Several hours into the swim the same thick fog set in,
but she made it this time because she kept a mental image of the shoreline in
her mind while she swam. This mental visualization on her end goal helped her
to doubt any doubts of being able to make it before she doubted her ability and
faith that she could.
If visualizing the shoreline in a long distance swim can
help a person make it, I am most confident that it will also help us achieve
big things in life. I hope that this week we can believe in ourselves, that we
can feed our faith and starve our fears. Whatever you are working to accomplish
in your life just remember, you may be closer than you think.
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