Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/122

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

their significance to her. With the daughter of the widow who was about to become a mother it required a statement of the facts accompanied by an appeal to the child's sympathies and to her instinct to protect.

With each individual there was a difference in procedure, but it all led to the same conclusion—the facing of the facts. This is not an easy thing for anybody to do. It takes courage. Often one is tempted to follow the example of the boy who plays hookey to avoid taking an examination, even though the postponement only prepares a more unpleasant crisis. Often, too, like Christiana in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we are glad to have some one stand with us as we confront the experience. Yet not infrequently to face the adjustment strips it of much of its terror. To see what one is about to meet or what one is already grappling with is to be strengthened for overcoming it. Let a man face the facts of his life and he has gone more than half-way toward a solution of his problems. The surest way out of trouble will be found in a seeking of the truth.