The Beautiful Blessings In Life’s Biggest Messes

“You’ll never be anything without me.” I can still hear him saying… I was 22 years old…two small boys, no college degree, no money…I had nothing…he liked to remind me of it all the time…

Yesterday as I closed on my latest house…#17, I couldn’t help but feel so humbled and filled with such gratitude as I thought back to that time… to where this all started… I had all the odds stacked against me… statistically I was never going to make it… I knew the risks, I knew what everyone was saying… I knew how bad it looked… but I had heard about “The American Dream” and I wondered… “what if?”…

I had grit, I had passion, I had determination… but more than that, I had nothing to lose…and so, with every ounce of me filled with fear… I leaned into faith, and I jumped… promising myself that I’d figure it out on the way…

Sometimes life will bring us through times so trying, that it doesn’t seem like it’s possible we’ll ever climb out… sometimes our situation seems so hopeless, that we don’t even know how it will ever change… sometimes the fear is so great, the doubt so deep, the shame so big, that we feel paralyzed, stuck, trapped… but know this… You are NOT here to play it safe. You are NOT here to play it small. Your destiny is NOT determined by anyone else except YOU … and if you stay in faith…if you allow yourself to silence the noise… if you give yourself a chance… you will start to pave a way… a beautifully imperfect, bumpy, windy way…

That one little run down, sad little house… never in a million years did I ever imagine that one step would lead me here… but I’ve learned that sometimes life’s most beautiful blessings are hidden in life’s biggest messes… always give yourself a chance to look for yours, and trust you’ll find it.