Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.

So a number of years ago, my sister had shared with me that she was reading a book to her

oldest son, who's getting ready for bed.

The book was called Hatchet by Gary Paulson.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this story.

It's the story of a 13 year old boy named Brian Robson, whose plane crashes on the North

Canadian wilderness and he finds himself in this wilderness trying to needing to survive

to make his way back to civilization.

So as my sister, who's incredibly tough, like she's a type A awesome, just really strong

person.

Anyways, as she was reading this book to her oldest son, they got to this point where,

and it says this, he says, when he sat alone in the darkness and cried and all was done,

all done with it, nothing had changed.

His legs still hurt, it was still dark, he was still alone, and the self-pity had accomplished

nothing.

No, it was at this moment that my sister closed the book and said, did you notice that?

Pay attention to this.

You're crying, your self-pity doesn't do any good.

So this reveals a little bit about the family of origin in which I was raised.

And there's something good about this.

In fact, there's something absolutely necessary about acceptance of our situation in order

for us to grow.

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