Traveling the road to glory is never easy. It will be full of pitfalls waiting to snare people and preventing them from reaching their goals. Now I’m not necessarily talking about President Obama glory or Michael Phelps Olympic gold though they surely went through a lot of pain to get to the top. Even regular people following their dreams can reach road blocks too.

Some people will take issue with the idea that Obama and Phelps are not “regular” people that are accomplishing their goals. And they would be right. One homeless person which is certainly a “regular” person struggled to write a book while living in the back of a car. She would steal time in corners of cafes and libraries to put her words down on paper. When it was finished she shopped it around to dozens of publishers before one decided to take a chance on publishing it. Today, next to the queen J.K. Rowling is the richest woman in England. Her Harry Potter exploded into our homes and continues to reach new heights. Any one of the barriers she met on her path could have stopped her; and have stopped others.

I am not trying to gloss over the accomplishments that people like these have made. My point is that everyone around us has much smaller dreams and goals that they are working towards and they run into pitfalls too. I think “smaller” is not a good word either. My dreams would put me on top of the world but you may think that I’m not reaching high enough. Who’s to judge?

Recently I included a post from a friend of mine regarding an organization called suitcases4kids; established to provide suitcases to children in foster care who only have trash bags to carry their belongings. The founder, Ron Nickerson, would not consider his goals as lofty. He takes in the foster kids that no one else wants, the hard cases. He has been very successful in turning them around making them productive members of society.

He came across the idea of giving suitcases to these kids from an article he read. He did some research and found that nothing like this was happening in New England. He jumped at the chance to help them. He put together a team and to date has brought in over 1500 suitcases just for the pilot program.

He also coaches parents on how raising their “incorrigible” kids.

None of this was all smooth sailing for him. He lost a few kids that couldn’t be turned around. There have been towns that don’t want to help the kids. And most recently he has found in the midst of all of this he may be losing his house. He doesn’t own it so it may be easy to find another rental. But with all the boys in the home it might be difficult to find a suitable place. But this is not stopping him; he has his road to glory and he is continuing to travel it by resolving his issues not letting them stop him.

The front page of his site has a letter written by a child that is moving through the foster care system. He talks about the trash bags and ruined family pictures. What is his goal? “I am in a new home now and I really want it to work.” I have met C.J. and he seems happy and adjusting well. His foster parents would love to keep him but they are waiting to find out if this is working for him. It appears he is well on his way.

And then there is my son Max. He has a lot of 8 year old dreams. He wants to be a soldier, an inventor, and an engineer to name a few. Recently he was not only promoted to third grade but he was also promoted to sixth grade reading. Major accomplishments (I didn’t even know he liked to read, he never does at home). But he also has personal goals too, like expressing his anger in less destructive ways. Hey, he’d even like to find out why he gets angry so easily!! Will he become president? That is a subject that is now less important to him than why he is so explosive. The anger and destructiveness are two of his road blocks. Once he gets through these he will be able to look forward to new dreams and new heights to reach for.

Everyone is on a road to glory, their own glory. It is up to them to get passed the pitfalls and even though a child needs to learn how to do it it’s up to the parents to guide them.