But we can do it. Perhaps we ought to turn “courage” into a verb so that we can clearly understand that it lies in our power, that we can make it happen. We could say, “I couraged myself through that struggle. I couraged myself into synergy. I couraged myself into seeking first to understand.” Just as forgive is a verb and love is a verb, we could make courage a verb. It’s something that lies in our power. That very thought is encouraging. That very thought strengthens the heart and gives one bravery. When you combine that thought with the vision of what your family can be, it can energize and excite you. It’s compelling. It drives you.
One of the best parts of being a family is that you can encourage one another. You can put courage into one another. You can believe in one another. You can affirm one another. You can assure one another that you are never going to give up, that you see the potential, and that you are acting in faith based on that potential rather than on any particular behavior or circumstance. You can be bold and strengthen one another’s hearts and minds. You can weave a strong and secure safety net of encouraging circumstances in the home so that family members can cultivate those kinds of internal resiliencies and strengths that will enable them to deal with the discouraging, anti-family circumstances outside.
“Sweet Love Remembered”
A short while before my mother died, I opened a love letter from her on a plane flying to some speaking engagement. She wrote such letters frequently even though we talked daily on the phone and visited personally every week or so. Private, effusive letters were her special form of expressing affirmation, appreciation, and love.
I remember reading her letter and feeling the tears roll off my cheeks. I remember feeling a little embarrassed, a little childlike, a little ashamed for being so vulnerable. Yet I felt so warmed and nurtured and treasured. I thought, Everyone needs a mother’s love and a father’s love.
When Mother passed away, we put on her tombstone a line from one of Shakespeare’s great sonnets: “For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings . . .”
I would encourage you to read this sonnet slowly and carefully. Let your imagination fill in the richness and meaning of each phrase.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate:
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
All of us can be our children’s and grandchildren’s “sweet love remembered.” Can anything be more important or more significant than that?
As with many of you parents, Sandra and I have shared supernal, marvelous, spiritual experiences with the birth of each of our children—particularly the last three when fathers were permitted to be present in the delivery room—and also when we were invited to be with our daughter Cynthia at the birth of her sixth child.
Our children were born before the modern-day miracle of the epidural was commonplace. I remember once when Sandra was in the last stages of labor with no anesthetic, she asked me to help her breathe correctly. She had been trained in this breathing technique during fourteen special preparation classes we had attended together at the hospital. As I encouraged and tried to model, Sandra said that all her instincts were to breathe opposite to the training given and that she had to “discipline herself and really focus to do it right.” She also said I was clueless as to what she was really experiencing although she valued my intention and effort.
As I saw Sandra go into the “valley of the shadow,” I felt an inexpressible, overwhelming love and reverence for her—in fact, for all mothers, for their many acts of sacrifice. I came to feel that all truly great things are born of sacrifice and that only through sacrifice—focused, dedicated parental sacrifice—can a truly good family come into being.
Through it all and despite the fact that we’re off track 90 percent of the time, I am absolutely convinced that the highest role and the most important stewardship we could ever have is that of mother or father. As my own grandfather, Stephen L Richards, said—and his words have impacted me powerfully over the years with regard to my own role as husband and father—“Of all the vocations that men may pursue in this life, no vocation is fraught with as much responsibility and attended with as much boundless opportunity as the great calling of husband and father. No man, whatever his accomplishments may be, can, in my judgment, be said to have achieved success in life if he is not surrounded by his loved ones.”
The Union of Humility and Courage
After a lifetime of study, Albert E. N. Gray made a profound observation in a speech titled “The Common Denominator of Success.” He said, “The successful person has the habit of doing the things unsuccessful people don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either, but they subordinate their disliking by the strength of their purpose.”6
As leaders in your family, you have a very strong and worthy purpose. And that purpose—that sense of destination—will motivate you to have courage and to subordinate your fears and your discomfort in starting some of the things you learned about in this book.
In fact, humility and courage could be compared to the mother and father of a metaphorical family we all have within us. It takes humility to recognize that principles are in control. It takes courage to submit to principles when the social value systems go in another direction. And the child of the union of courage and humility is integrity, or a life that is integrated around principles. The grandchildren are wisdom and an abundance mentality.
These are the things that enable each of us—as individuals and as families—to have hope even when we get off track and to keep coming back time and time again. We must always remember that there are “true north” principles that govern unerringly, that we have the power of choice to apply those principles in our own situation, and that our destination can be reached.
Even with all the struggles inherent in family life, there is no effort that brings richer rewards, sweeter treasures, and deeper satisfactions. With all the energy of my soul, I affirm that despite its challenges, family life is worth all the effort, sacrifice, giving, and long-suffering. And there is always a brightness of hope.
I once watched a television program where two prisoners independently expressed how unfeeling they had become as a result of their incarceration; they had reached a point where they no longer cared about anyone and were no longer influenced by anyone else’s pain. They told how completely selfish they had become, how totally wrapped up they were in their own lives, how they essentially saw people as “things” that either helped them get what they wanted or kept them from getting it.
Both of these men were given an opportunity to learn more about their ancestors. They became acquainted with how their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had lived their lives—their struggles, triumphs, and failures. In their interviews, both prisoners spoke about how enormously meaningful this had become to them. Realizing that their ancestors also had challenges and struggled to overcome them caused something to happen inside the prisoners’ hearts. They began to see others differently. Each began to think, Even though I have made terrible mistakes, my life is not over. I’m going to make my way through this, and like my ancestors, I’m going to leave a legacy that my descendants will be able to see. It doesn’t even matter if I never leave prison. They will have my history and my intentions. They will better understand the way I lived my life here. These men—sitting there in their orange prison suits, all the hardness gone from their eyes—had found conscience and hope. It came from coming home, from finding out about their ancestors—their family.
Everyone has a family. Everyone can ask, “What is my family legacy?” Everyone can seek to leave a legacy. And I personally believe that even beyond our own influence and the strength of our family, we have the ability to tap into a higher form of influence: the power of God. If we continue in faithfulness—never giving up on wayward sons or daughters but doing everything in our power to reach them and continually offering a prayer of faith—God may take a hand in the situation in His way and in His time. We never know when human beings will be inspired to reach into the depths of their soul and exercise their most precious gift of life: the freedom to choose to finally come home.