A Journey of Pain, Endurance, and Resilience

Life dries up for some people. Their lives become full of dryness. Dryness of hope, future possibilities, and dryness of brains.

This is what I felt reading the life story of Jean L. Serio in her chapter of the great and recently released book “Mission Hope”. The book has many other stories that are worthy, but this post focuses on the story shared by Jean titled “The Universe Doesn’t Always Accept Your Plan”, pages 149-155.

Jeans’ story is a great example of her struggle with many duties since she was a child. While other children were playing and enjoying life, Jean was taking care of her ailing sister and making sure to look after her. She endured this responsibility for years. When finally she managed to attend college, her studies and dreams fell through, as again she had to care for her maternal mother and grandfather.

There is no one way to describe the pain than of the one who suffered from it. Reading Jean’s descriptions of how much she had to cope with made me realize how my life was easy compared to hers. She accepted her duties and I found almost no complaints in her writing. She suffered but with admirable endurance.

That suffering eventually had some nice rewards for her. First, when she attended church and met a wise man who irrigated her dry hopes and revived them. After graduation, she met her old love from years ago. The surprise was that both got promotion offers to relocate to two places that were very close. That was convenient for both of them to meet and get closer to marry and lead a happy life together.

A great reward is the discovery that all the hardships Jean faced enhanced her resilience and awakening to the fact helped her exceed her responsibilities evidenced by her more than doubling her sales target at work. Jean’s experiences and studies helped qualify her in moving to human resources for which she was well suited. She was emotionally intelligent and understood people’s behaviors. Jean became an authority on human resources and managed with empathy and kindness.

The pains we suffer today are the hope of having a bright future. Never let your heart dry up. Read the book and you shall find many other inspiring stories.

Life is a testing ground. The book shows you that suffering can be a prelude to a meaningful life.