Can you bear other's burden?
Bearing other's burden.....
Many of us have immense capacity to help other inspite of our own deficiencies and short comings. A soldier lost his legs in a land mine explosion in a war. He returned home a war hero.
Twenty years later, he proved once again that heroism comes from the heart.
He was working in his garage in a small town on a hot summer day when he heard a woman's scream coming from a nearby house. He began rolling his wheel chair toward the house but the dense shrub would'nt allow him access to the back door. So he got out of his chair and started to crawl through the dirt and bushes.
He had to get there, he says. It didn't matter how much it hurt him. When he arrived at the pond there was a three year old girl lying at the bottom. She had been born without arms and had fallen in the water and couldn't swim. Her mother stood over her baby screaming frantically. He dove to the bottom of the pond and brought the little girl up to the deck. Her face was blue, she had no pulse and was not breathing. He immediately went to work performing CPR to revive her while her mother called the ambulance. She was told the paramedics were already attending out another call and it would take an hour for them to reach. Helplessly, she sobbed and hugged the soldier's shoulder.
As he continued with his CPR, he calmly reassured her. Don't worry, he said. I was her arms to get out of the pond. It'll be okay. I am now her lungs. Together we can make it. Seconds later the girl coughed, regained conciousness, and began to cry. As they hugged and rejoiced together the mother asked the soldier how he knew it would be okay.
The soldier repied, the truth is, I didn't know. But when my legs were blown off in the war, i was alone in a field. No one was there to help except a little girl. As she struggled to drag me into her village, she whispered in broken english, it okay. You can live. I be your legs. Together we make it. Her kind words brought hope to my soul and I wanted to do the same for your daughter.
THERE ARE SIMPLY THOSE TIMES WHEN WE CANNOT STAND ALONE.
THERE ARE THOSE TIMES WHEN WE NEED SOMEONE TO BE OUR LEGS, OUR ARMS, OUR FRIEND.
