Vantage Point

Hello and welcome back, if it’s your first time here I’m glad you are here! This past week was a doozy. Dropping your kid off for college is no joke! The days leading up to it are emotional, and then when you say that last goodbye and walk away, oh man. I’m pretty sure I made some kind of painful sound I’ve never made before as I hugged Luke goodbye, my tears freely flowing. I had hoped to hold it together until I reached the car because it was also a happy and exciting time, but nope!

The night before he left, he wanted to sit outside with us and have a fire in our fire pit out back. As we were sitting there enjoying the night, Jamie said “have you ever looked at the house at night from this vantage point?” To which I responded, “yes, but not very often.”

After that, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that things can look so different depending on how you view them. I’ll be the first to admit that I spent most of my life viewing my disability stuck at the same vantage point. Feet firmly planted, telling myself, this sucks! Questioning, why me? every chance I got. How could I possibly see anything positive from such an unfortunate hand I had been dealt? Poor me. That’s how I lived life, especially in my thoughts. It was depressing. In fact, I spent my young adult years dealing with depression. It was a difficult time mentally. I was convinced that was the only way I could see things. 

If you’ve been around a bit, you already know about my long journey to my diagnosis. I talk about it a lot because waiting for an answer for 44 years is a really long time to wait. However, maybe it was worth the wait? Maybe I wouldn’t have been ready to journey to this new vantage point I’ve found if I had been diagnosed sooner? Perhaps I wouldn’t have been ready or open to it? I mean, getting to a point where a majority of days you can view your disability as something you can be thankful for is no small feat. It’s a lot of mental work and diligence towards a better mindset. 

It took humble courage for me to journey to this new vantage point, but it brings me a sense of contentment that I never had before. It also takes humble courage to dwell here, and I definitely don’t succeed 100% of the time. Some days I slip and start to move toward the old vantage point, but I really don’t want to go back there to stay. In fact, maybe there is yet another viewpoint I’ve yet to discover. That seems exciting given all the blessings my current angle has brought me. If you too are stuck, and feel like there just isn’t any other way, try taking a journey and seeing yourself from a different light. You may just like what you find more than you could have ever imagined.💚 

P.S. I’m now officially a Purdue mom, Boiler Up!

I gave him the sweatshirt I bought the day I moved in at Purdue 💚