Preparation

I recently have been listening to a comedian and speaker named Michael Jr.  He's well known in the comedy community for being a clean comedian.  But more than that, he's an inspirational speaker.  He talks a lot about how growing up he had a lot of difficulty reading.  No one really knew his struggle because as a young kid he learned how to figure out what the word was by looking at different aspects of it.  He credits this challenge as a kid to why he is a successful comedian today.  What was a difficulty in his life prepared him for what God had in his future.  What he didn't know then was he was practicing. 

I have been thinking about this a lot recently.  What in my own childhood or growing up have I been practicing at that allows me to be successful today?  Or what have I been practicing that will one day allow me to be successful at something?

Today I found that one of my blogs was given a "Voted Featured Blog Post" on SparkPeople.  The post was from back in April 8 where I wrote about progress and how it is just putting one foot in front of the other and denying the voice in your head that says you can't take another step.  I was immediately overwhelmed by how many people had commented and told me how much my post had meant to them.  I was very humbled but also incredibly shocked at my own words.  Where had I learned to write with such passion and deep thought?  Who was the author behind such expressive words? 

Today I remembered the childhood I cherish and several things have stood out to me.  I have always been a creative soul.  Expressing words and thoughts has never been a problem for me.  I often played at giving presentations or pretended to be a lecturer giving a lesson to students about the authors of books.  I didn't know anything about those authors, but my creativity gave them each a unique background based on the titles of their books.  At the age of 15 I got my first job.  While most kids worked in grocery stores or mowing lawns, I was giving guided tours of 150 year old homes to groups of 20+ strangers at a time.  This is undoubtedly one of the reasons for my love of history and antiques.  In school, I was rarely without a book.  I give my mother full credit for my love of reading.  I read well above my grade level my entire school career and often detached myself from my own reality to create myself as a character in the book's reality.  Even today as a 32 year old woman, I find myself watching movies, TV shows, or playing a good game that makes me contemplate what my character would be in those worlds.  My mind often spins with good ideas for stories.  I suppose I forgot to mention that I wrote stories as a teenager too.  My fingers seemed to fly across the keyboard with story plots and characters. 

So what does this make me today?  For as much as I was humbled by the blog feature, I am also very proud of the training from my past.  It allows me to reach out to people now and leave an impression on their day by just using the thoughts in my head translated out into words in a blog.