Saturday, February 6, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Rising to the Occasion: a story of repentance and forgiveness
Since age 10 I have hated the song ‘Love at Home” because I was certain that the author of that hymn was oblivious to the fact not every home was happy. Some of us seemed to be stuck with Love’s evil twin sister, Hate. As a self-absorbed teenager it was all too easy to blame my parents’ divorce for all the problems I faced in life. If I wasn’t the starter on the basketball team it was because I hadn’t had a dad around who would take me to the gym at 6:00 in the morning to shoot hoops in preparation for try-outs. If I didn’t get the highest score on a test it was because the pain inside me was eating away at my ability to focus on my homework. If I didn’t have a testimony it was because I had two parents who weren’t serious enough about the gospel to lead me along the straight and narrow using the warm fuzzies that other children experienced at Family Home Evening. If I wasn’t happy it was because of them. My parents, their problems, and their divorce were the source of everything homely, lonely, dark, hairy, and pathetic in my life. At age 19 I was certain that I could have been a prodigy had it not been for them.
It wasn’t until I was in another hemisphere that I realized how far I had sunken into the dark hole of victimization. Suddenly, on the other side of the planet, with mom, dad, brothers, and sisters (and their ‘step‘- equivalents) outside of my blame-range, I was forced to face up to reality. Reality was simple: yes, my parents and their divorce had complicated things unnecessarily, but the fact was that it was my choices all along the way that led me to where I was. And at the time, I was cold and alone (Russia, if you haven’t guessed by now). As I pondered long and hard I learned that the power to be happy was in my control, regardless of where I was, or what my (or my parent’s) past had been. I soon realized that I was unhappy because I was unable to forgive my parents for their short comings and take responsibility for who I was. When I realized that I needed to forgive my parents for their mistakes a second thought dawned upon me: I wanted them to forgive me. I had not been able to see them as mortals. I had not only expected perfection from them, but felt justified in demanding it.
Mother’s Day, 2005 I rose to the occasion by asking my parents to forgive me for not seeing all the good they had given me, and for holding them emotionally hostage for their decision to get a divorce.
Christa's Response to Rising to the Occasion
In which I try not to write about my mission... and fail.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Gert's Grit
The book above, titled One Tough Mother: Success in Life, Business, and Apple Pies, tells the phenomenal story of Gertrude Boyle. Her challenges began as a young girl in Germany, when Hitler was gaining power and restricting Jews—which included her family—from going to regular stores or going swimming.
Despite owning a wholesale shirt factory, her father felt the need to take his family and move to Portland, Oregon, where his brother lived. Imagine 13-year-old Gertrude’s shock and excitement when her father returned from a trip to the United States and told the family that they were moving to a new country.
So they moved, and life was smooth for a time. Gertrude’s father started the Columbia Hat Co., named after the Columbia River. Gertrude graduated high school and went to the University of Arizona, where she met her husband Neal. After they married, Neal went to work for her father, eventually becoming the CEO of Columbia.
There came a point where Neal saw the need take on a $150,000 loan for the company. He argued that it was not a big deal—just going to the bank—but the danger was that he had put his $50,000 life insurance policy, his house, his beach house, and even his mother-in-law’s house down as collateral.
Three months after taking out the loan, Neal died at the age of 47.
What do you do? You’re a widow. A company has just fallen into your hands in the midst of a failing 1972 economy. Your home and your mother’s home are going to be lost. You have no personal experience the business world. Do you give up?
Well, Gert Boyle did the only thing she could do and took the reins the reign of the company, becoming CEO.
Read some of these excerpts from the book and you’ll get an idea of how tough Gert is:
"Around 1972, the bankers said, you've gotta sell it, Gert. So I found this gentleman--I'm using the term very loosely. He said, okay, I'll buy the company. But I don't want the building, I don't want the whole inventory. It didn't take me but a few minutes to figure out I was gonna make about $1,400, and I still had the debt. So I told the gentleman where to put it and where to take it."
"I had three union strikes, which also didn't help matters. I learned a few new words. As a matter of fact, a whole vocabulary. But I won. We, it's a nice word to say, terminated them. It's a reason we went overseas: We just couldn't afford to put up with the expense of fighting continually."
A major factor in the success of Columbia Sportswear was the “tough mother” advertising campaign that Gert implemented. The campaign struck a chord with a wide audience, shifting the focus of the sportswear company from hardcore winter enthusiasts to everyday consumers, including students, suburbanites, and babies. In one such advertisement, Gert forced her son, Tim, through a car wash to test a parka. Now that is some creative advertising, isn’t it?
"Before the tough-mother ads, I always thought our advertising was kind of weird, with the 'engineered' and all that. Because the average person doesn't care anything about having something engineered. People care about having it fit well. I'm the kind of person who always wants to try something new, so we tried something new. We had a German salesman, Mr. Wasserman was his name. 'No vone vould ever look at a voman telling you vhat to vear.' He got outvoted."
The small family business is now a $1.2 billion public company, and it’s clear that the Gert Boyle’s sheer grit was what took Columbia Sportswear to where it is now. And don’t feel bad for little Tim; he’s CEO of the company now.This should be a lesson to us all that when tragedy hits, it is vital to continue pushing forward. It is through fierce struggles that great victories are gained.
7 전 - 8 기
Rising With The Challenge
Perhaps for many characters in folklore and legend, rising to the occasion is accompanied by some awesome feat and is usually accompanied by victory. These stories are fun and entertaining. We strive to be these heroes of myth at times because our challenges are not wholly different from fiction, and we too want to be great. But the reality is that our world lies largely out of fiction and sometimes we do not come out conquerors of our contests.
As I reflect on some of the challenges of my past, I realize that although I have risen to meet several “great” difficulties in my life, the majority of them have been long, arduous undertakings. They required less of an ability to succeed at only one level, but rather maintain a level of endurance for a steady (if not indefinite) period of time. Because I believe that we have the ability to match these constant stressors of life, I believe that we can say that it is also our goal to rise with each occasion.
A good example of rising with the occasion comes for every missionary who struggles to serve…or teach…or love. We rise with the occasion as we get up and out of bed each morning to head to work or school. We know that the road to triumph in these cases is not easy and is not a one-time deal. While we may not understand the complete purpose in store, we do feel that each time we rise we come closer to excellence.
Each new day we face new problems that we must overcome. In times of weakness, I try to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln as he addressed the congress:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we
must rise – with the occasion.”
Personally speaking, I have not known life to get easier. Although I have known short moments of great achievement, most of life is a struggle that we must rise up with.
Rising above
Cathedrals, in my mind, represent rising above. They took so much work and time, but they still stand as monuments to the faith of the people who built them.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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