If

When I was in college, I came across this poem and something about it struck a chord with me. At the time, I didn't realize how much of it I would have to learn to live out in my own life as a woman in ministry. Ministry life either makes you strong and learning to lean on the Lord, or it can destroy you. I've known many a pastor and ministry leader who are no longer in that position because they couldn't take the stress and criticism.

My son has just started this road and is already seeing how difficult it can be, and how much criticism comes at you over non-sin issues. People's preferences reign supreme and it can muddy the waters of ministry. So my prayer for him is the following poem. My prayer is that he can learn grace in the midst of criticism. That he would listen, weed out the bad, accept the good and not let it discourage and destroy him.

There is a lot of truth in that little two letter word, if. 

If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too: 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
Or being hated don't give way to hating, 
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim, 
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
 
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools; 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
And lose, and start again at your beginnings, 
And never breathe a word about your loss: 
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 
If all men count with you, but none too much: 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!