Meet

Don’t hate other people for suffering less than you do. 

It can be easy to take the bait of being self-righteous about the pain we’re in when we see others in less or different pain. Especially when that pain comes and goes more fluidly than ours does.

We can let our pain drive us away from other people or we can let it broaden and soften our capacity to understand and relate to other people. 

Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity to learn something and understand someone we didn’t before. And when we understand someone we can take it a step further and encourage their heart. 

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Advantage

Your biggest disadvantage can be turned into your biggest advantage. 

I don’t blog much about what life with a chronic illness is like, but I want to share my biggest advantage with you. 

Everyday, I have to fight. I have to fight to feel “descent” or get to a ground zero space that most people wake up at. Most people wake up to some degree or another refreshed, rested and with their to-do list of productive effort clear in their mind. 

This is not the case for me at this time. I wake up to devastating pain that feels like someone tried to rip me limb from limb overnight. There’s a deep rooted nerve conversation happening that the moment I awake becomes many screaming voices rather than a civil conversation. 

I have learned to trap myself into success by systematizing the start and end of my days. For the first four hours of being awake, I’m compensating for and doing everything possible to sooth and quiet the pain. I used to think that I wake up “behind”. Behind as in the ground is moving underneath me and if I don’t hit it running, I’m falling behind. 

Now I think of it like this: I have to fight four times as hard to be in a physical space that most have the luxury of waking up to with no effort. By the time I’m able to be productive with anything outside of myself I have put in four hours of love, attention, inspiration, healing energy and kindness. 

I invest this time thinking of all the people who will be blessed by my situation in the future. I think about the places I want to go and the things I want to do. The music I want to make and songs I want to dance to. By the time I feel the way you do when you wake up, I’ve been dreaming and planning for four hours. I’ve been investing and soothing. I’ve been being kind to myself and believe I can do anything I set my mind to. So that by the time my body is ready to do what you pop out of bed able to do I have clarity of mind about where I’m going. 

So while others have 8-12 hours of productive energies everyday and get done whatever they get done, I’m focusing my two hours of productivity on doing exactly what I’ve set my mind to accomplish. Maybe others see this as a great disadvantage, but I’ve chosen to believe that I can accomplish with my two hours compounded over the next ten years what few will accomplish with their twelve over the next forty. 

You see, what was meant for me to be a road block keeping me in the head space of discouragement I have chosen to flip on its head. I’ve turned what would stop most people to a screeching hault into the very reason why I can accomplish so much. I hope this doesn’t come across as haughty - I believe everyone can capitalize on their biggest struggle to transform it into their unique advantage. 

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Fall

Sometimes we need to be knocked over to realize how close to falling we were to begin with.

It’s been one year since I last lost my balance completely and fell down stairs. We all know that feeling too well - that feeling of, “I should have seen that coming”. 

I’ve learned that you can get a snapshot of your character not from what you say to yourself before you fall, but by what you say to yourself once you’re down. 

Your subconscious can’t take a joke. What you say to yourself when you’re down and out and as you’re getting up, or even once you’ve gotten up and brushed the dirt off is what sticks. Sure, maybe the bruises sting, but remember that the thoughts stick. 

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Late

It’s always too soon to say what you’re thinking.

Timing is everything. There are days and even years where it seems like God isn’t showing up. He let his friend die and stay dead for three days before he arrived.

It always looks like it’s too late by the time he swoops in. And yet everyone and everything is subject to change, so it’s always too soon to decide where you land. Somehow he will pick just the right moment to turn the tables and pull the rug out from underneath us. Timing is everything.

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Attitude

Your attitude is the magnetic scent you carry around with you. 

A bad attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy; your attitude chooses your future. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at seem to change. 

We all have the ability to upgrade and bullet proof our attitudes. The question is: are we developing an attitude based on or independent of our situation? You can be in a situation but your situation doesn’t need to be in you. 

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Carve

You can learn things you don’t like from people you don’t like. 

Life has a pesky way of carving out the selfishness inside of us - that is, when we choose to let it chisel out rather than plaster on.

The truth of the matter still stands: we can learn. We can absorb new things from all angles and places, including the ones that don’t make us feel good.

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Belief

You will pay the price to believe it before you see it. 

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

Our faith is the evidence. The evidence of what we expect and hope for. And to have expectancy is to anticipate with great joy. What are you believing into existence? Go out on a limb to believe it before you see it. 

Click here for the song.