Today when I visited Dad at the rehab facility, there was a family stringband playing old fashioned gospel favorites for the residents.  The band consisted of Grandpa (mandolin and lead vocals), Grandma (guitar and harmony vocals), Mom (fiddle), Son #1 (guitar and harmony vocals), and Son #2 (mandolin).  They were amateurs but it was clear that Grandpa was a formidable player back in his earlier days.  Grandma was probably pretty good, too, but arthritis had taken its toll on her fingers and she couldn’t throw her fingers into the basic 3-fingered “G” chord;  –instead she caught the outside strings at the 3rd fret.  It sounded OK, too.  I couldn’t hear any of the open A string coloring the chord.

When we start out learning to play guitar, G is probably the first chord that separates the calloused sheep from the tender-fingered goats.  I personally had trouble with F, but the others fell readily into muscle memory.  If you don’t stick it out and learn G, you probably aren’t going to play guitar.  So at some point, Grandma had probably climbed that mountain and come out on top.  Can you imagine what it felt like at the point in her golden years that she realized that her fingers were too uncooperative to play a regular G anymore?

The old adage “where there’s a will, there’s a way” comes to mind.  She took the cards Life dealt her and continues to play her hand, doing the best that she can. My 94 year old father is amazing the doctors at the rehab place with his will to recover.  The pain of the physical therapy is excruciating, but he’s determined to stick it out because he has hope.  Today he was pulling himself down the hall in his wheelchair using his feet.  Three days ago, he had no lower body control at all.

Where do we learn to persevere?  Who taught you to keep going when things got tough?  I played for graduation a few weeks ago and I’ve yet to hear a graduation speech 1/10th as inspirational as the one Churchill gave at Harrow School in 1941:

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

You’ve probably heard that somewhere before.  But Churchill’s closing remarks are the best:

“Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days–the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”