The meeting was no different than most. The agenda was short and to the business at hand. Before me was a lawyer, very much caught up in a mood of personal reaction to a conversation held prior to the meeting. "You're reacting," I told him, "In a short while this will pass, and you will need to become proactive."

We have all experienced those moments in life where we get derailed by an unforeseen event or change in circumstance. We all understand the anguish that comes when our hopes are built up only to have the rug pulled out from under us. We've heard of people who stand like a rock in the face of such times, but to most they are only fables.

As I left my meeting, I took a drive to reflect on the moments which had just passed. As I thought of this lawyer, I thought of myself and times I could have reacted better to situations. My thoughts wandered further to another lawyer. A real estate lawyer by the name of Horatio, who hailed from the Chicago area. This man had invested much of himself and his money in prime downtown Chicago real estate only to have it wiped out by a fire in 1871, where 300 people were killed and 100,000 were left homeless. About this same time, Horatio's son died of unrelated circumstances. All that was left for this suddenly devastated lawyer, was his wife and four daughters.

After two years of trying to help the poor and the homeless, Horatio decided it was time to send his family on a cheap vacation to visit friends in England. His wife and daughters, sailed ahead of him on the Ville de Havre. Off of Newfoundland, the Ville de Havre collided with an English sailing ship, the Loch Earn, and sank within 20 minutes. In the hours that followed, a telegram reached Horatio from his wife, bearing only two horrific words, "Saved alone." All of Horatio's daughters had been lost at sea.

Hollowed from sorrow, Horatio boarded the next available ship to be near his grieving wife.

Though there is some confusion as to when exactly he did so, during the days immediately following the loss of his daughters and while in the company of his wife, Horatio Gates Spafford took up a pen, and while in the darkest depths of a pain few of us could ever imagine, penned these words:

"When peace like a river attendeth my way;
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul..."

In the depths of his sorrow, Horatio Gates Spafford wrote the song we now know in the church community as one of the great hymns of the Christian faith, "Peace Like A River".

We have all experienced those moments in life where we get derailed by an unforeseen event or change in circumstance. We all understand the anguish that comes when our hopes are built up only to have the rug pulled out from under us. How we handle or respond to our circumstance lays in this simple reality...choice! We can choose to respond well. We can choose to respond poorly. "Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul".

No matter what happens in life, we can teach ourselves to respond well. For some students such as I, it is a lesson, always in the learning. A lesson that requires, time, practice, patience, and understanding. In the end, we reach a place where we can stand in the face of a personal storm, and know, it is well with our soul. Grab hold of the excellence life has to offer.