First Off

I hear it, this continual calling from the Lead. A series of maneuvers with one purpose; to advance. How is it the battle is so much more intense here than in the rear? It is the same war, the same cause. I realize I have the same option always; to press on or sit out. The decision is mine. The battle will go on while someone else takes my place, if I refuse; if I just wait this one task out.
I get tired of it to be sure. I move with obvious strength to those around me. I have the battle scars and knowledge of their lesson to correct me but it is not always enough. I lose heart. I remember my lack. I don’t want to hurt.
Then it happens, as it has often happened. One with enthusiasm deeper than my own jumps into my foxhole. His eyes are always both warm and excited all at the same time. My wounds do not compare. His wounds defy life.
He asks me if I’m ready and gives me encouragement, defines value. I think of my wife, my sons and my girls.

Phillipians 3:12-16
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk.