My wife Ruth and I have always had chickens around our place, and a long time ago I learned something important about them. If you help the chick out of its shell when it’s hatching, it’s going to be too weak to survive. It’s the struggle that develops its muscles. I believe it’s the same way with us humans: It’s the struggles in our lives that develop strength. Not just the muscle-strength that chickens need, but the things that make human life strong. Gratitude and perseverance and faith in God. Featured Product Guideposts Magazine - November IssueGuideposts MagazineTry Guideposts magazine Risk-Free! Get 2 Free Issues - plus a Free Gift! . It’s why I’m glad, looking back, that I didn’t know any big shots in Hollywood when I came out here after World War I. No one to open doors. No one to crack that shell for me. I got into pictures the hard way–as an extra. Year in, year out I hung around the studios, made the rounds of casting agencies, waited for the call-backs that never came. I don’t mean it wasn’t painful while I was going through it–struggle generally is. A good many times during those years, Ruth fed our family of three children on a dollar a day, plus what those chickens and our backyard garden contributed. But because the big things were slow in coming, I learned to thank God every day for the little things. A 60-second walk-on part, the chance to speak one line, a job driving a truck so my family could eat while I waited for that big break. I remember one day in 1926 Gary Cooper and I were driving to work together in a 1919 Buick when the brakes gave out. Those were the days when the brake bands were on the outside of the wheels. We’d heard somewhere that if you put castor oil on the bands it would make them swell. Well, we tried it and it worked, and Gary and I came down over that steep pass praising God for castor oil. The lean years helped me discover, too, what my wife is made of. Never once did I hear Ruth complain. While friends and family were telling me that I was a fool to keep on waiting and hoping, she just stuck by me, spreading faith and courage and laughter. FREE eBook Paths to Happiness: 7 Real Life Stories of Personal Growth and Self-ImprovementPaths to HappinessDownload a Free eBook filled with stories that show you how to transform lifes challenges into opportunities! . There were times when I was sure the others were right. Because along with the money and career struggles I had an even tougher personal battle. I’d been with the 26th Division during the war, spent 19 months overseas, nine of them in the front lines. For years after the war, buddies landed in the hospital with nervous collapses. When I’d run into fellows from my old outfit, the first question was always, “Well? Have you folded yet?” “No, thank God,” I’d say. Then one night I woke up at 2 a.m. with a feeling like I was sinking right through the bed. That was the start of it–months and years of fighting a nameless, numbing fear. I got so I wouldn’t even drive a car. When I was doing a picture, Ruth would have to drive me to the studio, then come back and get me when I was through. But if I once thanked God that I hadn’t cracked, today I can thank Him that I did. For out of that experience, rough as it was, I learned what fighting is all about. “Be thou therefore prepared for the fight, if thou wilt have the victory,” wrote Thomas à Kempis in his book, Imitation of Christ. “Without labor, there is no arriving at rest, nor without fighting can the victory be reached.” I learned what it was like to hang onto God when He was all I had. When the panic would hit me I would ask for strength. Or I would just ask for the faith to ask for strength, like the man who told Jesus, “O Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:09:24 +0000
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