I am neither rich, nor famous. I have published no books, nor won any great awards. It seems the headwinds of life have been blowing throughout my career. I had to sue my longest term client to overcome its breach of contract and get compensated for years of faithful work. etc… Sometimes I feel like reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
……..
But when I do, I know it is a lie. Our first child was born when I was making a dollar an hour, milking cows. I had to check our third child out of the hospital using a credit card. Without patron or much in the way of visible means of support, my wife and I raised, clothed and educated six children. We are now the proud progenitors of twenty five ( soon to be twenty six) souls. And there appears to be no end in sight. Truly an eternal blessing that flows without compulsory means forever. Even in hindsight, I can’t account for how we pulled it off. Only by the grace of God.