One of the reasons I think people should consume a regular diet of biographies is their ability to help us see our heroes as real people. When we look through the lens of history it is very tempting to lionize people who were mere mortals.

This becomes abundantly clear as I read Ron Chernow’s most recent biography – Grant. I must confess to not knowing much about our 18th president other than he was an important general during the Civil War who rose to the highest office in the land.

Chernow paints a fascinating picture of a real person. He could be bold, commanding and decisive on a battlefield and embarrassingly naive in a business boardroom. He was a man who spoke few words, often speaking a few short sentences when called upon for a speech. He was completely blind to the true nature of people he considered friends – often openly praising them while they worked against him behind his back.

And yet, despite these frailties, he rose to the challenge when the country needed him the most. Lincoln gets most of the credit for keeping the Union together, but it was Grant’s strategy that pressed the Confederacy into submission. Ultimately, it would be Grant who had to figure out how to put the country back together again.

Stories like Ulysses S. Grant’s should give us hope. If you have ever felt like a nobody from nowhere, you have good company. Turns out that most of history’s heroes are fairly normal people who used their God-given gifts to do what they were called to do. They were normal people placed in extraordinary circumstances who preserved.

I think the trick is to be faithful to bloom where you are planted.

I am thankful for stories like these. They remind me that what is most important is to be found being faithful today. And, to not worry so much about looking for a pedestal to climb up on.