Being George Washington by Glenn Beck Page B

apparent hopelessness of the situation, Washington maintained his resolve. He may not have been the greatest tactical general of all time, but he knew how to lead. And he knew that real leadership required bravery—especially when all hope seemed to be lost.
    The American Job
Washington was living the story of Job.
Like Washington, Job was a prosperous and respected man of his time. He led a charmed life and had seven sons and three daughters. One day God asked Satan what he made of such a righteous man. Satan retorted that Job was only decent because he had been shielded from crisis and suffering by God. If Job were to live without divine protection, if he were to experience loss and catastrophe, Job would surely turn to the dark side.
God tested Job’s resolve by taking everything from him. Despite the hardships, Job remained humble and true and was soon rewarded again for his trust.
If God was indeed watching over Washington and the rebels, then Valley Forge was likely their Job moment. Faced with the loss of everything, they very easily could have given up, or worse, turned against their own cause.
But, led by Washington, they did the opposite. And, just like Job, they were eventually rewarded.
     
THE STRUGGLE TO KEEP IT ALL TOGETHER
     
    “Naked and starving as [our troops] are,” Washington wrote, “we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the solider.”
    It was that admiration that made the unfathomable suffering and death he saw every day even harder to take. But that wasn’t Washington’s only problem—many men had also decided to return to their families or farms once their conscriptions to the army had ended. Of those who stayed, many complained endlessly about the dreadful conditions and were dragging down morale of everyone. “This is not an army, this is a mob,” one general noted after a visit to the camp.
    And some soldiers had more nefarious intentions in mind. There were two thousand colonial deserters during that winter. The British, after all, could pay them in the sound currency of pounds sterling, while the Continentals offered only depreciated, nearly worthless money. (Boy, does that sound uncomfortably familiar.) It’s estimated that around eighty colonists joined the English as spies that season. Consequently,scores of rebel spy rings in and around Philadelphia were exposed, decimating the important intelligence operations that Washington so desperately needed.
    Right Man, Right Place, Right Time
There are many great lessons to take away from Valley Forge, but one of the best is that you are only as good as your preparation. We see this so many times in Washington’s life—what seems to be luck or coincidence is really the result of preparation and skill, all guided by the hand of the great Author. And we see it in our lives as well. People who seem to be “overnight successes” are generally those who’ve spent years preparing for the one moment that might decide the rest of their life.
Valley Forge was not the first time Washington had commanded ill-equipped and sickened troops. If it had been, he very likely would’ve failed. Starting as a Virginia regiment militia commander who was charged with defending colonists from vicious frontier Indian attacks, Washington had learned to survive with insufficient supplies in conditions so harsh that even most of his fellow colonists would have found them completely unbearable.
And then there was his experience with suffering. Washington had spent nearly his whole life battling sicknesses (diphtheria, malaria, smallpox, dysentery, quinsy) and fighting against the cruelty of nature—something that had steeled him for this critical winter of the revolution. During the French and Indian War, Washington battled a vicious bout of dysentery. It hit him so hard that rumors of his death began circulating throughout Williamsburg. Though he bounced back from this illness with renewed strength, his familiarity with suffering