Life is hard sometimes.

Life is also unfair.

That is not an observation. It is a fact.

In this life, we will lose loved ones, we will battle with broken relationships, sickness and disease, poverty, loneliness, abuse, violence, and every other possible thing imaginable. Bad things will happen to good people. Bad people will get away with unspeakable horrors.

The true test of our character lies not in how we react to the adversity that will inevitably happen, but how we handle and overcome that adversity to grow as a person.

I believe we all have our own “mountains” to climb in life. Some people’s mountains will be taller than others, but it is on each one of us to climb them.

If we spend all of our time complaining that “this person’s” mountain isn’t as hard as ours to climb, or complain about the inequalities of mountain sizes amongst our society, we will lose sight of OUR personal mountain called “life” in front of us and we will not accomplish what we are called to do.

With Jonah’s autism diagnosis, we can react in 2 different ways. We can either become bitter and sad, lonely and depressed. We can be jealous of other parents who don’t have to deal with the meltdowns, the non-verbalism, the sleepless nights, the doctor’s appointments and the IEP meetings…

or…

We can see this as a grand opportunity. An adventure unlike any other. We can CHOOSE to be more than we ever thought possible. Instead of mourning the perceived lost potential, we can unlock and discover the hidden potential Jonah has waiting to be unleashed on the world. We just need to dig a little bit deeper to discover it.

We can sit around feeling sorry for ourselves…. or we can ‘rope-up’ and start scaling this mountain.

Let’s climb.