Show Them Your Back

In 1756, a big, hot tempered Virginia wagon driver named Daniel Morgan was hauling supplies for the British army when a British lieutenant struck him with the flat of his sword. Morgan answered like any self respecting Jersey boy would have, with his fist and knocked the man cold.

For a colonial to strike a British officer was nearly a death sentence. The court martial ordered 500 lashes with the cat o' nine tails. Most men didn't survive half that. Morgan did. He carried the ridged scars on his back for the rest of his life, and he carried a joke along with them. The drummer counting the strokes, he liked to say, lost track and only gave him 499. So the British still owed him one.

Twenty-five years later, they paid up. On the freezing night of January 16, 1781, Morgan was camped in a South Carolina cow pasture called the Cowpens. In the morning he would face Banastre Tarleton, the most feared cavalry officer in the British army, and he would do it with a force built largely on militia. Farmers. Shopkeepers. Men with families back home who had a well earned reputation for running when the redcoats charged.

Most generals would have cursed them for it. Morgan did something different. He walked from campfire to campfire that night, talking with the men, telling them exactly what he needed from them. Not the impossible. Just two shots. Fire twice, then you can fall back. Everyone do their part. And then, according to the accounts, he did something no polished European officer would ever have done. He pulled up his shirt and showed them the scars on his back.

Think about what those frightened men saw in the firelight. Not a general who had been handed everything. Not a candy, but a man who had been beaten nearly to death and kept going. A man who knew what it felt like to be treated like you didn't count. A man who understood them. A man like you and I.

The next morning the militia gave him their two shots and fell back, just as planned. Sure the Americans were breaking, Tarleton charged headlong into Morgan's hidden line of Continentals and were caught on both flanks. Within an hour, one of the most feared commands in the British army was destroyed. Historians still call it one of the most perfectly fought battles in American history.

People traditionally tell this as a revenge story. The British gave him 499, and he collected the last one with interest. It makes for a great line.

But the real power of Cowpens didn't happen in the battle. It happened the night before, around the fires. Morgan's scars could have made him bitter. Instead, they made him believable. The thing that was meant to break him became the very thing that gave scared men the courage to stand. Never trust a leader without a limp. Morgan had a massive limp, and his men trusted him.

Joseph from the Old Testament knew this well. Sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused, forgotten in prison, he ended up second in command of Egypt with the power to repay every wound. And when his brothers finally stood trembling in front of him, he said this:

Joseph didn't deny the harm. He named it. But he refused to let it have the last word, and he used the position his pain had carried him to, not to settle the score, but to save the very people who had hurt him.

Most of us are carrying something on our back. A failure. A season of loss. A betrayal from someone we trusted. A hard word from a boss years ago that we can still recite. Our instinct is to keep the shirt on. Hide the scars. Lead from the polished version of ourselves.

But the people around you aren't usually encouraged by your highlight reel. They're encouraged when they find out you've been where they are and you're still standing. The new loan officer who's afraid she isn't cut out for this. The teammate whose marriage is struggling. The friend who just got the diagnosis. They don't need a general who has never been hit. They need someone who will sit by the fire, tell them the truth, ask them for two good shots, and show them their back.

God doesn't waste a single stroke. What was meant to break you may be exactly what someone else needs to see tonight.

What scar in your life have you been keeping covered? Have you let it make you bitter, or has God been quietly shaping it into something that could help someone else?

Think of one person who is in the middle of something you've already walked through. Reach out today. You don't need a speech. Just tell them, honestly, "I've been there. Here's what helped me." And like Morgan, ask them for something small and doable, the next two shots, not the whole battle.

Be the hardest working person in the room, keep fighting and rising through failures. And then share your experience with others and lift them up with you. Show them your back.