November 29, 2004

Dear Shane,

Better watch out…better not cry…graduation is coming to town.  An exciting time?  You’ve earned your restoration…and, the gift is nearly complete.  Your community, your governement and your military have given you the opportunity to start over.  It’s a one time offer.  It’s a one time opportunity.  You took it and now you reap the rewards.

But, what you have not yet experienced is the next step for those who possess “the gift”.  You must now feed it, protect it and take special care that it is not harmed.  And who, you might ask, is it’s greatest enemy?  YOU.  It is the human condition to seek comfort, to sit at the TV, to be free of responsibility and to have fun all the time.  It is the human condition to be lazy.  Those who succeed are those who seek a dream or force themselves to protect the “Gift” until the dream shows itself.

The world is full of lazy people who have no dream and seek no goals beyond living for the day.  Some will likely include your family members and your former friends.  They are rarely rich.  They seldom seek more than survival for the day…and, they do survive.  Some spend time in prison, hospitals or the bread line.  Others live bland, complying lives in jobs they can’t wait to escape or marriages that bring nothing but routine discomfort.

There is a better life and you are tasting it now.  It comes to those who can sleep peacefully at night and work for their dream couragously during the day.  You have completed the first purging and difficult step.  The next steps are not so painful but they continue to bring you to new doors, new people and new more rewarding thoughts.  Is it a free ride?…far from it. 

Your better life will require you to leave old friends and meet new ones.  Your better life will require a faith in yourself and an awareness of your personal worth even when others can’t see it.

So, you will graduate soon with more burdens and responsibilities than you have ever known.  You will now prove your worthiness.  You will now see that the gift you have sought and earned carries a burden greater than you have ever known. 

Lincoln’s Challenge gave you the opportunity to re-start. 
It’s now your turn to show you were worthy of the gift.

Happy commencement,