Modern Battles

Modern Battles

[The Lord] will conceal me . . . when troubles come; he will hide me in his sanctuary. He will place me out of reach on a high rock.

Psalm 27:5

Cassie prided herself on having come from a long line of strong, independent women, starting with her great-grandmother, who had kept her family of five fed and clothed during the Depression of the 1930s. When Cassie’s history professor had talked about the development of the B-17 bomber, which allowed the United States to win World War II, she thought of her grandmother’s twelve-hour shifts of riveting metal in the noses of planes at the Willow Run plant in Michigan. Cassie’s own mother had been part of the first Peace Corps team that went into West Africa during an epidemic in the 1960s.

Now Cassie was carrying on that same strong tradition: She could balance her own checkbook, change the oil in her car, and figure her own taxes, all while running the computer software company that had grown from three employees to more than a hundred in the first five years of its existence. Cassie demanded a lot from her employees, but she was hardest on herself. She lived by one philosophy: If you want something done right, do it yourself. And she acted out that philosophy by double-checking everything her secretary sent out, calling her department managers several times a day, and asking for detailed reports on each step of a new project.

Cassie’s favorite historical figure was Molly Ludwig Hayes, the young wife who followed her husband to the Revolutionary War and courageously carried water to the wounded and dying. The soldiers called her “Molly Pitcher.” During one particularly fierce attack, Molly saw her husband fall beside the cannon he was firing. She ran to his side, not to cradle him in her arms but to take his place and fire the cannon herself. That’s the type of woman Cassie wanted to be, and every day brought a new corporate battle in which she could fire figurative cannons. Whenever she was finished with a major project, she was exhausted, and so was everyone around her. —SANDRA

Lord, thank you for the examples of strong women in Scripture, in history, in my life. But help me to remember that although they were strong in a few areas, they were not strong in everything. Help me to listen to you as I concentrate on the responsibilities you have given me. Help me to enjoy the process as well as the finished product. And help me not to exhaust either myself or those around me.

Work doesn’t make you who you are.

—JANIS LONG HARRIS, AUTHOR