Remembering matters – remembering the right things matters even more.
The point of yesterday’s quote wasn’t forgetting past mistakes or pain. Instead, I hope to encourage us to keep things in perspective.
Writing the story of RELENTLESS GRACE was difficult because I was committed to being authentic. That meant going back to the day of my injury, the ambulance ride, the ICU, and those horrible first days in the hospital.
Too many stories omit the difficult parts and talk only about the miraculous outcomes. I didn’t want to do that, but honestly, I didn’t anticipate how hard it would be. But here’s what’s important.
All that awful stuff ISN’T the story. It’s important background, but after a very long struggle I learned not to engrave it in marble. It’s not the final chapter.
If you’ve read the book or followed along here for a while, you know the story is about God continually sending people who refused to let me give up on myself. I rejected them. He sent others, until finally four guys broke through and got me onto a handcycle that changed everything.
You see it, right? How easy it would have been to stay mired in the grief and loss and completely miss the blessings.
I don’t think my story is unique. While my circumstances might be extreme, I suspect most folks have a somewhat parallel story. We all have grief, loss, pain, mistakes in our past.
It’s so tempting to cling to that stuff, to be certain it’s the final chapter. When we do that, we engrave it in marble. We can’t let it go.
I’m not going to be captain of the Good Ship Lollipop and pretend releasing that stuff is easy. It’s not.
But – I believe it’s possible. We can move forward.
We can look for and focus on the blessings.