Do Hard Things

My sister-in-law recently had a post about doing hard things and why she has been able to do them in the past and why she thinks she is having a hard time now. I really enjoyed the post and had been thinking about "hard things" before she posted it.

I love that as the human race that we strive to do that which we are told is impossible. As I was putting off doing homework one day I was listening to a graduating speaker on Ted.com (my new favorite website) and he talked about the differences and similarities of humans and animals. The main difference is that when someone tells us that we cannot do something we want to prove them wrong and do it anyway. I really need to pay more attention to who I listen to on there so I can give them credit when I talk about their ideas.

It really has made me think of what I have done in my life when I was told NO, you can't do it. I have had doctors say “no”, I have had teachers say “no”, I have had friends say “no, it can't be done”. Even more often I have been the one who has told it myself “no, it can't be done”.

A little history if you didn't know me at the time or don't remember of one of these times. When I was filling out the paper work to go on my mission for the Church my doctor had placed a note on my medical forms that he thought that I might have a heart defect that results from Marfan syndrome because I have long fingers and other symptoms of this disorder. One of the Doctors from Church Headquarters called and said that if I did not go and have a echocardiogram, an ultrasound of the heart, I could still server a mission but would have to stay state side just in case I had heart complications.

So I heard “no, you won't serve a foreign mission”. My mother was just fine with this news, I however was not. When I had decided that I was going to be a missionary I as decided that I could go anywhere as long as it was outside of the USA. I wanted to do something that my brothers did not do. I talked with my parents, my mother trying to tell me that knowing I was going to go stateside was ok, my father telling me to make up my own mind and me wanting to have the test done so that I would at least have the chance.

We had the test done, my heart was normal, no remote sign that there was any defect nor that one would show up in the future. With my papers complete from the medical side, my papers were finished; I was called to sever in the Paraguay Asuncion North Mission. I would not have it any other way.

I just wish that I would have done that every time I was told no. I love to rebel when someone else tells me no but once I tell that same word to myself I stop fighting and succumb to defeat and stop. I like my sister-in-law do not know what really stops me. This is one reason for the quote at the top of my blog, if I am stopped I hope at least it is by something valid and not something in my head.