Who we are

 I have a small letter board where quotes are displayed in our home. I change the quote periodically and mostly they are silly or funny. As I was scouring the internet today to find a new quote, I came across one that hit me deeply and I knew that we needed it as a reminder in our home. It speaks to something I have been thinking about a lot in the past few weeks and actually felt inspired to share my thoughts with my boys recently. The quote says, "The world needs who you were made to be." I asked Malcolm today what he thought it meant and he surprised me by saying, "it means to be me." why? "because the world needs me." Its so true! We were all born with a worth that is individual to us. Something we brought into this existence that no one else can replicate or master. Something that is so distinctly YOU that it can't be bought or sold and the world needs it. In the past I have tried to cover who I am to conform with who I think I need to be. I masked my reaction to adversity because I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling the way I did about challenges. When Jeff was first told he had a brain tumour, he was at the Lethbridge hospital for a CT which was ordered by the dr as a precautionary measure. I had completely forgotten he even had the CT that day but I got a phone call from Jeff telling me they wouldn't let him drive home and he needed someone to come and get him. When I got there, they directed us into a little room with a computer and pulled up the images of his brain scan on the screen. They explained that the tumour was significant in size and a neurosurgeon would be in contact with us ASAP. They predicted surgery within a week and a long road ahead, and do you want to know what my first reaction was? I so distinctly remember sitting in that room thinking "Bring it on! We got this!" I didn't worry about the hard, I didn't cry, I didn't wonder what life would be like, I felt excited for the challenge. I don’t usually tell people what my reaction was and I covered it for so long because I knew that wasn't what a normal reaction should have been. I should have been devastated. I should have been terrified. I should have cried. It may have been that I was young and naive, that I truly didn't know what the extent of this hardship would cost but I knew that my reaction set me apart from other people. I didn't understand at the time how much of a gift that initial reaction and mindset was but I am slowly discovering as I become the person I was sent here to be that I no longer have to hide it and conform to the way I "should" be. The world needs who I was sent here to be.