Persevere in This Journey

Excerpts from “The Right Fight: How to Live a Loving Life” by John Kennedy Vaughan

Persevere in This Journey

“I have heard it said that winners never quit and quitters never win, but so many winners have quit so many times along the way.

“The greatest memories in any victory are the times we got back up after quitting. In my fifteen-year journey chasing my dream [of a national water-ski jump championship], the moment it came true may have been the best moment in the journey, but it was only a moment.

“The journey was where all the value was, and the most valuable moments were the ones in which God and others helped me get back up and try again. The only chance we ever have to persevere is when we find ourselves wanting to quit or after we have quit.

“As I waited my turn to jump hundreds of times over many years, I began to learn I had little to no control over how I felt as I waited, and I also began to learn that how I felt had little to nothing to do with how I would perform. Sometimes I would feel like my body was itching to go. I felt like I could jump over the moon. Other times, it felt like my legs were made of cement, like I hardly had the strength and energy to even put my gear on. Many times, I allowed how I felt to impact how I performed when it shouldn’t have. My legs feeling like concrete didn’t make them weaker, and my legs itching to go didn’t make them stronger. It was the preparation, not how I felt, that determined if my legs were strong or not. The problem was that how I felt still affected my mind-set.

“One day while waiting my turn, feeling like my legs were concrete, I realized the only chance I ever had to practice overcoming that feeling, the right fight was when I felt it. I couldn’t practice persevering through that feeling when I felt great and didn’t want to quit. I could only practice overcoming when the opportunity presented itself. Before long, I longed to feel those concrete legs again so I could prove I could overcome them, and what I learned in the end was that how I felt was so unrelated to my ability to perform. I started almost longing for the concrete legs because I wasn’t sure I didn’t perform better when I felt them.

“Persevering means keeping on—perhaps quitting but always starting again. Sometimes the loss is so great or the pressures are so strong that we must quit to ensure we are able to persevere. Then we must begin again—start over when we are rested and continue on with a new mind-set and a renewed heart. Persevering means falling down, failing, but having the courage, every time, to get back up as fast as possible and get back in the fight.

“For ourselves—in fear—we will give all we have, knowing it’s not enough but still trying desperately to convince ourselves of the lie that we are enough or better than someone else. For love—for God and others—we are able to give more than we ever knew we had.

“Perseverance is important in many aspects of life, but one thing we must persevere in more than any other is love. The only way love won’t work is if we don’t love. Love really does never fail if we persevere in love. I used to think love does fail because I saw it failing all around me. I saw marriages failing, relationships of all kinds failing, even my own relationships failing—so how could it be that love never fails? What I learned was that love really does never fail—we just fail to love. When we fail to love, then fear wins, and failure becomes our destiny. Loving people will get us hurt, that’s for sure, but it will never hurt us more than choosing not to love. Persevere in love at all costs!”

I didn’t realize, in the seven years prior to the Coronavirus Pandemic, as I wrote “The Right Fight,” that so much of the book would apply to a pandemic that would occur two years after the book published. But, God knew.

Laus Deo,

Kenny