Day #21 in A Year of Positivity

“Behind you are the challenges you’ve met. Before you lies new possibilities. Today you choose the direction of your life.” – Unknown

Hello and welcome back to A Year of Positivity! Today’s quote comes from an unknown source, but if you know who the author is, please reach out to me, so I can give credit where credit is due. The quote is, “Behind you are the challenges you’ve met. Before you lies new possibilities. Today you choose the direction of your life.” This quote should ring true for everyone in one way or another. It especially does for me.

There was a lot of instability in my life during my early childhood years. I bounced back and forth between seven elementary schools before I found my eighth one that carried me through the same school district until high school graduation. During the time that I bounced back and forth between the first seven schools, I failed first grade due to my lack of hearing, which was corrected with help from an audiologist who then diagnosed me with having major bilateral conductive hearing loss.

We were also a pretty poor family that was even at the mercy of the Ronald McDonald House in Hershey, PA while my sick baby brother underwent inpatient chemotherapy for his Neuroblastoma (an incurable childhood cancer of the adrenal glands). Sadly, we lost him to a battle of his disease in January 1997, just two months shy of his 3rd birthday. This was a truly devastating time that changed our lives in ways I can’t even begin to describe without tears, along with my heart breaking all over again.

Eight months later, I myself almost died in a car accident where I was run over by a car, which crushed my left pelvic bone with the wheels of the car dragging it out of place. I was nine years old at the time, and I shouldn’t have survived that accident, but through a miracle by God I did. The doctors weren’t sure I’d ever walk again, but with the grace of God I proved them wrong.

From there life got stable, and I grew up and graduated. I went to school for Irish Step Dancing and performed in front of real audiences at a festival designed for honoring and celebrating the Irish culture and heritage. I wrote a book for my high school graduation project presentation (at the time I graduated, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it was a requirement to graduate, though that’s since been done away with). I wrote more books and eventually became a real author.

These are just a few examples of some challenges and accomplishments I’ve met in my life until now, and this is barely scratching the surface. I say all this to tell you we all have challenges to meet, and battles we’ve already faced. I see so many opportunities in store for my future, and thanks to all that I’ve been through before, all that’s shaped me into the person I am today, I’m confident enough to say that I can reach the goals I have in place for me and my future.

If you stand where you are now, and glance back at all the things you’ve been through, all the good and bad, all the goals you’ve met, all the struggles you’ve endured, you’ll see just how far you’ve come. You’ll see how strong life has made you. And, if you look ahead, you’ll see that life is full of so many countless opportunities.

But today is yours. It’s yours for the taking!
So, what will you do with it?