August 19, 2024
***As I design future Happy Monday messages, I’m compelled to share fragments of my life story that I believe will add value to yours. I’ll be scattering a collection of personal experiences that have profoundly shaped the depth of my style in every realm. As I do, I am hopeful your heart is receptive to what my heart was led to write.
“Your perspective will become either your prison or passport.” – Steven Furtick
I believe life is constantly enlarging us if we see it this way. Even though this is my outlook on life, in the fall of 2015, I experienced a new understanding of this life stance.
Here’s why…
My body jolted out of bed at 3:17 a.m. in mid-August 2015. I was convinced to leave my corporate career to pursue my lifelong dream. I couldn’t deny the intensity of the timing to “do it now.”
Later that day, my husband and I were in our living room. Sitting cross-legged on the couch, I shared what I felt compelled to do. I knew I was asking him to trust me and to let me step away from everything known, safe, comfortable, and financially stable to chase my dream, and this ask would initially add pressure to him and our family finances.
He asked a variety of questions and then said, “Okay. Just don’t mess it up!”
With his support and my passion in hand, I launched my lifelong dream of bar 33 leadership; just a few months later, I received a call that changed everything: I had cancer.
I was unprepared for this significant shift, especially since I had just stepped away from various levels of security, including financial, and promised I wouldn’t mess it up!
This was the beginning of my real journey of growth. Although I thought I was already growing, I quickly realized that what I had done was commit to this perspective when life threw challenges my way—choosing to be refined, not swallowed up by them.
As Joyce Meyer says, “Trials ‘try’ us, and tests ‘test’ us, but their purpose is to reveal our character. We can think highly of ourselves, but until we're tested, we don't know what we're made of.”
Going through trials helps us understand ourselves better; it exposes the hidden things in our hearts. Until they are told, we cannot do anything about them. Everything we go through strengthens us and builds endurance; it develops a deeply rooted character that will stay with us forever and helps us know ourselves and deal with things honestly.
The natural response to pain and difficulty is to shut down and go inward. A helpful response is to open up and go forward. A critical strategy for staying strong is perspective. Every step forward, no matter how small, is a victory. Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance, and it allows us to appreciate their true value.
Intentionally Own It: What is its most significant growth for me when considering the message above? What personalized action does it encourage me to take?