52CP13: Don't Quit

Hello again! Thanks for stopping by to see what our challenge will be this week! I have a poem for you this week, written by that famous author, Anonymous! I swear, that guy (girl?) writes everything! Anyway, here it is:

Don't Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about
When he might have won if he'd stuck it out.
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow;
You might succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out ~
The silver lining in clouds of doubt ~
And you never can tell how close you are;
It might be near when it seems so far.

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit;
It's when things seem worse that you must not quit.

That poem was part of a mural in the clinic my mother had to go to when she needed transfusions as part of her palliative care for leukemia (she opted for hospice as opposed to chemo, etc.) I thought it was a great poem and wrote it down so I could remember it.

It came to mind again a few weeks ago when the prompt for week ten of Gina's "Heart the Art" was "keep going", and then again when Cindy Motherway's Teapot Tuesday challenge incorporated making cards for Lindsay - the daughter of one of her friends who is pregnant and undergoing chemo for her just-diagnosed lymphoma. I printed the poem out for her to frame, and also made this card:

Stamps: Stampin'Up! Messages for Mom, Close to My Heart Springtime Possibilities; Ink: SU! Melon Mambo, Versafine Onyx Black; Paper: SU! Bashful Blue, Melon Mambo; Accessories/Tools: Detail clear embossing powder, Cuttlebug w/swiss dot embossing folder, sewing machine, doilies, flower, ribbon, gem, border punches

I wanted to focus on the possibilities, rather than the down side of what she's going through, so I just made a general encouragement card for her. What will you make this week to reinforce the theme? Here's Mr. Linky: