Doug: I hate everything about me. Why do you love me?

Someone once described doing the right thing to me as “Imagine the hardest thing in your life you’ve ever had to do. Now imagine it being a permanent weight on your spine that, in a moment of weakness, you can take off. But if you did this everyone that you cared about would think less of you. You can get used to it, eventually, but the temptation to take if off will always be there. That weight is a constant reminder of what is right, and what is easy.”
I like easy. I like finding the simple solution, the quick fix. The problem with this, of course, is that the simple fix is usually the sloppiest. Whatever you’ve created with your simple fix will break down, like a sand castle caught in the rising tide. One moment it stands tall and proud, detail embroidering its parapets and towers; the next it’s just a lump of sand, the rising tide having swept away all that was beautiful and unique about it. Another wave after that… well, the sand just looks the same as it did before your castle ever stood there.
This is if your mortar is nothing but sand and positive thinking. But if your mortar is concrete, your walls reinforced titanium, then, you stand against the waves. The encroaching deep has nothing on your castle of steel and light. Problem with all that is that it takes time, and effort. But your castle stands.
So I guess there really isn’t an option is there? In order to be good, honorable, to earn the right to guard your people, you must be a good man. You must know how to do things the hard way, and must have done things the hard way before.
This is about something. I’m not going to tell you about it if you don’t already know, so don’t ask. But do know that I’m trying; I’m trying really hard to be the shepherd.
But talking ain’t doin.
-Doug
“And I discovered that my castles stand/ upon pillars of salt/ and pillars of sand”
-Coldplay, “Viva la Vida”