What are the chances of someone playing successfully in Major League Baseball–with only one hand? Jim Abbott won the Big Ten Player of the Year at the University of Michigan in 1988. He also won an unofficial Gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics with the US Men’s Baseball Team. In 1989, he signing with the California Angels, then a major-league team.
Eventually landing with the New York Yankees, he pitched in the original Yankee Stadium (“the House that Ruth Built”). That stadium had seen over two dozen World Series winners: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, the 1950s Yankees of Mantle, Berra, Ford and Casey, the 1970s’ Reggie Jackson. Those players represented some of the biggest names and moments in baseball history.
Even among such baseball greats, Jim Abbott not only showed himself to be an All-Star when it came to overcoming adversity. He earned baseball immortality and joined those other Yankee greats in 1993 by pitching a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium.
Not A New Challenge Only
Biblical Job also shows resilience. At first, after repeated professional and personal disasters, he wants to die (Chapter 3). But with support from colleagues, who argue he somehow brought misfortune on himself, yet stick with him, Job confronts his worst fears, that God would strike him down if he protested.
How have circumstances conspired against you? What adversity are you experiencing that leads you to want to give up? How does Jim Abbott, or Job, provide you with incentive to go on another day, another hour, another minute? How could their stories help you overcome your adversity?
[Source: 6 INSPIRING STORIES OF OVERCOMING ADVERSITY YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW, in Self Esteem by Interconnected Lives March 31, 2015.]
