Whenever you next complain about the tediousness of work and study, or the long walk home, or the lack of material pleasures in your life, remember Dianne Odell, who spent her entire life stationary within an iron lung, a 2m-long iron tube. She was afflicted with bulbo-spinal polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered, and spent almost 60 years of her life confined within the iron lung, unable to breathe outside it but determined not to let it destroy her spirit.

I was saddened upon reading this article, and a song immediately came to my mind.

Give Thanks

Give thanks with a grateful heart;
Give thanks unto the Holy One;
Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ His Son.

Click through to read more about this heart-rending true account

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I’m sure most of you would have heard of the Rite of Passage for all Cherokee Indian youths.

Nevertheless, I’m sharing this story because I find it most meaningful.

All Cherokee Indian males have to pass through a rite of passage to confirm their status as a man. If they were successful, they were not to relate their experience to anyone, not even their closest friends, as each male must come into manhood on his own.

One night, as a young man stood on the cusp of adulthood, his father took him into the woods, blindfolded him, and left him alone. He was made to sit on a stump and he had to remain there the whole night, braving the cold, wild spirits, and the beasts of the land. He was warned not to remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shone through it. He also was not to cry out for help to anyone.

As the night lingered, his fear mounted. His skin tinged at the burning heat of the moon and shivered at the coldness of silence all at once. He trembled at every rustle of the trees and the howls of the wild beasts.

Did he pass the test? What happened to him? What lessons can be drawn from this story? Click through to read on

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A new year
A new dawn
In the east
On the horizon
The sun rises
In the morn

The times we shared
The tears we cried
On the spectrum of
The rainbow we ride

Click through to read the full poem

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