I recently finished reading Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry. Yes, that is the full title of the book and I recommend reading every page of it. In this book, Julia Fox Garrison relives her story as a survivor of a cerebrovascular accident and her struggle to recover to her maximum capacity. Although deemed the title "in denial" by just about everyone she comes in contact with, the 37 year old woman proves through her amazing optimism that determined, positive, and hopeful are very different than being in denial. She learns through her experience and teaches through her understanding that things happen for reasons, and sometimes we get to know why and sometimes we don't. But God has a plan. God put us here to do something. And if for no other reason, it is to become a better person.
This Thanksgiving season has been very different for me this year in the sense of things that I am grateful for. I am beginning to appreciate, simply by learning of others' experiences, the most basic things that most of us, including myself, have taken for granted over the course of our lives. Things like the ability to see, or to communicate, or to sit up, or to stand, or to walk, or to drive, or to have a functioning circulatory system, or to spend time with family. I appreciate being independent. As I sat talking with my grandfather after dinner on Thanksgiving, he taught me the importance of appreciating what God has blessed us with. He described to me the challenges of growing old and the difficulty he has had with accepting that death is indeed inevitable. But he taught me that giving up is never the answer. He taught by example that getting down on our knees each day to thank God for what He has given us can make all the difference, especially for the things we need every single day but tend to forget are a privilege to have.
God has a plan for each and every one of us and a mission for each of us to fulfill and He has given us what we need to do so. "We all have been given the power within us to overcome any situation. It's our choice as to whether we tap into that strength." Julia says, "It's better to find some area in your life where you can grow than it is to find some area where you can complain." And we should all try to move forward even if it means sometimes we have to fall backward because there is a power in positive thinking and attitude and there is joy in seeing challenge and opportunity in adversity, which makes a victory more worthwhile.