Never Quit

Not too long ago a dilemma got my attention. It was a wad of string. The easy thing would have been to toss it in the burn pile, but not me. I saw a challenge. I decided to unravel it.

For the next few minutes, I unraveled the string. Some knots were tight, some were multiple, and some were downright hard, but I worked until I had an unraveled string that I rolled on a spool to use again. My wife Lisa will challenge, “You ain’t going to quit until you get it are you?” She is right. It is not my nature to quit but I am tempted to often quit.

One of the largest temptations to quit was school. I love to learn and solve problems but hated school. As started in an earlier article, I would run away from school. I tell people that I started school in 1959 and finally graduated in 2002. Schools included Beloit, Illinois kindergarten, elementary, Jemison, Alabama elementary through high school, University of Montevallo, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and finally Beeson Divinity School Samford University in Birmingham. If you throw Bessemer Technical, Bessemer, Alabama, and Howard Extension in Birmingham, that is a lot of school for someone that wanted to quit.

Every Monday all four years at the University of Montevallo, four at New Orleans, and three at Beeson I wanted to quit. Each Monday I found myself in class.

In the eighth grade, a football coach encouraged me to play football. He said I had the size to be a good player. I decided to try it. Having missed two weeks of practice, my teammates decided to catch me up. There was no junior high team, so I practiced with the varsity line. They tried to kill me. I was so sore the next morning that my mamma had to dress me, feed me, and force me to attend school. There was no way to practice so I QUIT!

Another coach who worked with the junior high encouraged me to came back. He was aware of what happened. I rejoined the team. I learned a valuable lesson. I promised that I would never quit something that I started. I may stop and sit it down but will pick it up and try again.

While enroute to church, I tried to button the cuff of my dress shirt. Using my left hand to button the right cuff was a little difficult. The laundry starched the shirt and somehow the buttonholes of the cuff were closed tight. My right hand had a very difficult time trying to button the left cuff. Arthritis did not help any either.

While driving Lisa noticed my difficulty and said, “I will button them when we get to church.” I kept trying, stopping for a few minutes, then tackling the tiny buttonhole again. I have a sneaky suspicion that the cuff buttonholes are smaller on the left.

I have found that in life more people encourage me to quit than those that encourage us to continue. When I began the University of Montevallo at age twenty-nine, married with two small children, and no finances, well-meaning family, friends, and folks said I would quit. As I said, I wanted too. God placed people in my journey that said I could.

My Christian faith is one that says, “Never say quit.” That is something that former University of Alabama quarterback Steadman Shealy said in his book Never Say Quit. In the spring of 1978, his football career was thought to be over, but Steadman prayed, sacrificed, worked hard, and demonstrated great faith overcame knee surgery and severe infection to lead the 1978 Alabama football team to a national championship followed by another in 1979.

Another Alabama great, quarterback Jay Barker says, “First of all, I just want to think my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because I’ve had so many criticisms, and the Lord says in the bible, ‘If you just humble yourself therefore under His mighty hand, he will lift you up In Due Time,’ and this has been due time for me.” Due Time: The struggles and triumphs of Alabama quarterback.

These are two of countless others that have faced life’s struggles and through faith refused to quit. The main person in the Bible that did not quit was Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath began a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6 KJV

And let us not be weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9 KJV