Lead From the Front
My father raised me to never ask of someone something I wouldn’t do myself and with caution ask of someone something I couldn’t do myself. My father a bag boy turned Store Director over a 45 year career could still be found pushing carts in on his way back into the store from lunch.
Run it like your own. Was one of the quotes I have kept with my own work ethic.
This work ethic would encompass, by my adult years, the mantra of great military leaders, “Lead from the Front”. Alexander the Great would be first on the walls of Tyre as his siege engines and sea ships converged in the final pincered assault of the famously hated city. Alexander however, was also there with his men from the early days under the punishing sun in the levant, carrying stone by stone into the ocean to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah that the hand of God would reach out from the land and destroy Tyre.
History reminds us that divinely inspired prophecy have been fulfilled by divinely inspired sinners willing to do the work. Charging into battle may be what jumps off the page after thousands of years pass, but the battle began the day Alexander carried that first stone into the sea.
It was with this heart that I, after only recently returning from a Mexican excursion that had followed an already exhausting week in the hospital helping care for my mother, I returned to my former home in San Diego to oversee the experimental treatment I had commissioned for my mother. By the grace of God, the divinely revealed became the divinely inspired and it would appear impossible has gave way to a possible and even the positively probable outcome we could not imagine nearly 1 month ago.
Multiple sequential lab results have returned with signs of success weeks ahead of even the most optimistic calculations. Most importantly my mother who would struggle to stand mere weeks ago has forgone her wheelchair and is slowly shedding her cane on daily walks.
While exhausted, the past week spent somewhere between a medical researcher and home healthcare worker, along with being a son, husband, and soon to be father was one of the most rewarding times of my life. Family poured in from across the continent all witness to the miracles they asked for. Praise poured out for the gracious abundance and extravagance we have received in these days.
The war may not yet be won but tide has now changed and I am reminded of speech my Aunt gave at a family breakfast gathering in Morelos a few weeks ago:
“We know you are at war but we are in your fight and with you in your battles.”
They are still some of the most beautiful words I’ve heard in my life in English or Spanish and will stay with me for the rest of my life. To whom do you need to remind you are with in their war? The strength you lend may be all they need to win their fight.
-SF