Set the Record Straight

 

This life is a journey we must all endure. We were all created with a capacity to overcome. We are all born champions. I look at the little children who have overcome cancer. Their little bodies can’t handle the pressure of a disease such as that but yet one day victory is theirs. And from that pain they suffered or endured many birth into purpose. They start foundations and communities to help their peers or the next generation cope and overcome their life struggles as well. Many live to tell their story & give other people hope. They bring inspiration & light to this world.

 

I look at all of us as God’s people and how different we all are. A lot of us are born with every ligament, bone, and body part. Others are born with deformities or diseases. Some are born in a wheelchair, some have missing body parts, some are born deaf or blind. We all walk this earth for one purpose no matter how different we appear to be. We’re all struggling, we all suffer and endure pain. We’re all here in hopes of living life the way God planned it one day. Unfortunately a lot of our faults, shortcomings, or differences in appearances get in the way. No matter how we’re created, shaped, formed or look we are no better than the next person.

 

Many people who desire to walk look at people with two full grown legs desiring to be in their position. While the people with full grown legs who walk to places look at people with a nice car desiring to be in their position. While the people with the car are looking at the people who flying on jets desiring to be in their position. It can go on and on.We’re all somebody desiring to have something that we don’t have that someone else has.

 

But we don’t see the impact & impression we leave on others when we’re operating in our differentness and uniqueness. There’s a reason why we are the way we are, it shows us how much God loves us. It shows us how He doesn’t have favorites. It’s shows us how He is able to use anybody and everybody to make a difference in this world for His glory. God doesn’t look at our appearance or the things we lack as a deformity. He looks at our heart. There’s something about us that He wants to use. The beautiful part about it is if our hearts aren’t able to be used right now He wants to be the one to fix, heal or restore it so that He can use us for His pleasure. He desires for everyone to have hope and see the beauty of life. He desires for everyone to prosper and to be encouraged, uplifted, or spoken life into. No man is left behind when it comes to God. He wants to use us to make an impact in this world and sometimes how we feel or how others make us feel gets in the way of that because we don’t fit in with society & their standards.

 

Nothing is impossible with God, He can turn anyone’s situation around. It’s not that God has forsaken us or rejected us He wants us to see what He has put in front of us. He wants us to know that if they can do it we can do it too, it’s just our perspective or mindset that gets in the way of seeing God move in our lives.

 

I look at all the records being broken. I’ve seen a one legged man lift heavy loads as a construction worker while walking around using a crutch to hold his one missing leg. I saw how people in wheelchairs managed to run track while in their wheelchairs. I’ve seen older men, 60+, who are aren’t in good shape like how they used to run track. I’ve seen people in wheelchairs play basketball. I’ve seen people get told they were too dumb to become writers or novelists but yet they grow up and become well known and touch the heart of many others. There are a lot of people who have had dreams and was told “that’s too impossible to accomplish”  because of how they looked or appeared to the naked eye but yet there they are accomplishing what people tried to hold them back from.

 

In fact, I saw on the news one particular girl who (while in my hopeless season of life) inspired me to press forward, Anastasia Pagonis. She is an athletic & brave girl who loved to play soccer. She started having trouble with her vision so her doctor recommended she transition over to swimming since it was a non-contact sport. Unfortunately, at the age of fourteen she became legally blind. That didn’t stop her from still doing what she loved to do. She allowed herself some time to process what she was going through while gaining support from her family, friends and doctors.

 

She suffered from thoughts of suicide, stopped eating, and even retreated from family and friends.

“I felt worthless and hopeless, and if I was going to be blind, then what was the point of me living,” Pagonis said.

 

She ended up gaining her own inner strength and hopping right back into the sport she fell in love with. It was her own will to love her best life and to never give up that helped her. At the age of 17, she won her first gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympics.

 

“I’m going to show people that they are not alone,” said Pagonis, who frequently pokes fun at her visual impairment in her videos.

These were her exact words:

“Everyone is super ignorant when it comes to blindness. They think you have to look a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way, and that is not the case at all. Just showing people this is what blind is, this is what blind looks like, and this is the things that I can do being blind.”

 

There are a lot of us who feel rejected and unwanted, because of how we are born, the encounters  we’ve suffered, or the mistakes we’ve made in life. I found that the only cure to that is go where you’re wanted, go where you can relate, where you’re accepted, and go where you will have support and help.

 

There are particular communities for each and every single one of our differences we just have to set forth on a journey or adventure to seek them. As if we’re Dora the explorer, exploring God’s intended way of Life. There are a lot of us who are sitting in a season of darkness thinking will I ever make it out of this. There are a lot of us who are hopeless, full of emptiness, in isolation mode and stuck waiting on someone to save us but the door is unlocked and across the street awaits the house who has been waiting on you to accept His invitation.

 

A lot of us want God in our lives but we’re not accepting Him in. He’s waiting on you to accept His invitation but sin has you stuck, your deformity has you stuck, your uniqueness has you stuck, your disease has you stuck, your pride has you stuck. There are so many things that we feel are keeping us bound but in reality the key to unlock the chain is in our hands.

 

I saw this one cartoon where these kids were on a journey to basically overcome Satan. In this one particular scene, it ended up showing what appeared to be demons flying over this one woman who was suffering in the abyss. Technically she was just standing there screaming and waving her arms for no reason because no one was doing anything to her.  The demons had a bored look on their face because they couldn’t really torture the people how they thought they would because they were just like the woman, torturing herself.

 

Sometimes no one is there making us suffer, it’s us who make ourselves go through unnecessary pain and suffering. Sometimes we put ourselves in the bottomless pit. We think lowly of ourselves, we speak death into our situations, or we devalue ourselves. We come into agreement with so many lies from the devil and we put ourselves in a place of torment when the light is right there for us to turn on or walk into. But it’s hard because we’re too deep in darkness to see how bright it is.

 

I look at the story of Moses and how he found it difficult for God to want to use him because of his slurred speech. Moses was insecure in the way he talked but God still loved him and chose him for this assignment to free His people. God has a pattern of choosing people who would normally be rejected or the outcast in certain families or society.

 

I also look at the story of David and how God sent Samuel to look for the one God wanted to anoint as King. Samuel went to David’s father house where he threw a feast and invited all of his sons, and unfortunately everyone was there but David. Samuel went through the sons and asked God to confirm if they were the one He was looking for. One of the sons was tall and handsome, so he looked the part but God said no because He wasn’t looking at the outside appearance He was looking at the heart. Samuel went through all of the sons and was clueless because ain’t no way God sent him on a trip in vain, someone had to be there. So he asked the father if there were anymore sons and Jesse, the father finally mentioned David and said he was tending the sheep. How could Jesse forget his son David? Why wasn’t he invited to the table?  David was the youngest one, and the one who was left out but God chose him and anointed him to be King.

 

In spite of our insecurities God wants to use us, and of course there are going to be people who down talk us or kill our dreams but we can’t focus on them, we have to focus on the great I AM. Because that’s the One who is sending us to accomplish certain goals, reach certain dreams, help and inspire certain people. He gave each and every single one of us an assignment and just like Moses He’s telling us to go and free His people. For a lot of us that means doing the impossible like Anastasia Pagonis or Lebron James and setting the record straight.