There’s Nothing Special About Me

Often, people tell me how impressed they are that I can be so positive during this challenging season. That I can have so much joy and hope and a smile on my face. They tell me how great it is to see my perspective and how they are inspired by it. I suppose it’s taken about as much effort to stay mentally healthy as it has to stay physically healthy, so I’ll admit it’s rewarding to hear that people see the fruit of that effort in my life.

But it makes me see that for some reason, we tend to think that some people are better “made” to handle tragedy and hardship, and that some people can simply handle and persevere better than others. If you are impressed with how I handle my current circumstances, then it means you believe you wouldn’t be able to respond to similar circumstances in the same way.
That’s a lie that Satan wants you to believe in order to prepare you to fail the future obstacles in your life.

The truth is, there’s nothing special about me. I assure you, I have never looked at someone else’s grief and thought “yeah, I’d be strong enough to handle that situation”. My capacity for positivity and hope is no greater than yours. Every day I face the same basic question as everybody else – how do I choose to respond to my circumstances today? And I choose the positive, and reject the negative.

Sounds easy, right? I think what makes that choice hard is we tend to have the wrong definition of “positivity”.
Staying positive doesn’t mean that I’m happy and peppy and bursting with joy 24/7 (phrase cred: Ed Young!) It also doesn’t meant that I shove my emotions away and pretend like they don’t exist – that would be awfully fake. No one is helped by fake positivity.

Being positive means being honest, but not becoming negative.
It does not mean “brutally honest” where you just get to think about talk and spew with no filter.
It means acknowledging the doubt, but not losing hope. It means allowing the hard emotions, but rejecting the darkness of fear or pessimism. It means recognizing there is both the good and the bad, but choosing to focus on the good.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly had my share of days that were anything but positive – days where my mind was stuck in the spin cycle of fear and pessimism and nothing would change that except just going to bed and trying to do better tomorrow.
But that’s my point – that’s honesty. And sure, no one is 100% perfect in rejecting negativity, but you can do your best and when you miss, you try better tomorrow! And you know what – there’s a good chance that tomorrow you will do better.
There is great power in being the right kind of positive in the middle of the pain. And since there’s nothing special about me, you have just as much power to do that in your situation as I do in mine.

I said earlier that Satan wants you to fail the obstacles in your life. The good news is, what Satan intends for evil, God intends for good. And His intention is to prepare you to live life victoriously in that same set of future circumstances.
So whatever you happen to be facing today, start choosing the right kind of positivity. You can still be honest, but don’t go negative. And when you practice that, whatever you are impressed by in me today could be who you are tomorrow!

Footnote:
Because of my circle of friends, I make assumptions that the majority of the people who read my updates are Christ followers. But this time I think there’s someone who is not. So if I’m right, then this last part is for you.

When I speak of positivity, it’s more than just the willpower of positive thinking. I have a relationship with a God who cares about me and my situation and He hates this cancer more than I do. There’s nothing special about me, but there is something special about that. And that relationship is just as available to you as it is to me.
I can’t handle life on my own, even when things are going well – after a certain amount of time, I run out of steam, and things go south. But there is a strength and a power that is available to help me through crummy circumstances like cancer that I could never otherwise handle. And if you aren’t living with that help, that love, and that hope in your life, then whatever circumstance you face today I don’t envy you, and I encourage you to instead face it with Jesus.

If you’d like to do that, it’s pretty easy…it’s just a simple prayer that admits life is too hard to do on your own, and you want God to be a part of it. Put your trust in Him and see if He doesn’t come through. If you need some help, here’s how you can pray;

God, I admit to you that I haven’t done everything right in my life, but I believe you can fix it. I ask for your forgiveness. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I want to stop doing things the way I have been and turn to you instead – come into my heart and my life and make it new.

And if that’s a prayer you decide to pray, tell somebody about it! There’s a whole mess of people just waiting to help you know more about what that means. You can even tell me in the comments…that would be an amazing thing for me to hear during this season!