“Be big in the moment.” ~ Kevin Heller
Each day, each hour, each moment of our lives we have decisions to make. Sometimes those decisions are fairly simple: Teriaki or Asian Zing? Decaf or fulltilt boogie? The Porsche or the Kia? Other decisions are slightly more difficult: Should I try for that new position at work or stay where I’m at? Should I work harder on my marriage or just call it quits? In case you hadn’t already noticed, life as a whole is hard – and it’s hard for everyone, which makes decisions tougher because don’t have all the answers; we don’t even have half of the answers. But what we do have, what we’ve always had, is a God who is on our side, who wants us to succeed, and who has literally given us everything we need to succeed… we just need to use it! And thus He is waiting for us to “be big in the moment”.
My son has a learning disability. He is funny, sensitive, hard-working and kind – but he has a learning disability, and that is a heavy load to carry when you are young. Now this “disability” was never overtly obvious; he has a quick wit and verbal saavy. But when it comes to transferring those thoughts and answers to paper, then there is a noticeable issue. When he hit second grade, his standardized testing ranked him in the 1-3% among his peers; after that came the flurry of observations, evaluations and learning plans. As a parent, however, I knew my son’s potential and I did not let any test or evaluation steer me from the course; my son had a learning disability, but that was not going to become a crutch for him…. So I never told him. I wanted him to be confident, not labeled; full of character, not condemnation, and full of determination, not self-pity. So all of my tears and my fears I kept to myself, I prayed to God for His strength, and Christian and I made a plan.
From that point on, Christian worked constantly to change his way of thinking and to improve the way he learns. He worked hard all day at school, and then he came home to a rigorous schedule that we had set up for him every evening. He went to summer school, and he was so serious about it that he gave up his “vacation” time so he would not miss school. For almost three years he did this without wavering, rarely complaining, and a few times breaking down into tears because it was so hard. But he continued. And people noticed. At the end of his fourth grade year, at our final conference of the year, both of his teachers broke down into tears talking about my son – my son.
You see, he still didn’t realize that he was the one with the “disability”; he thought he was in the group with “those kids who were having a hard time” to help them. He saw it as his responsibility to keep them focused, keep them from causing trouble, and to help them understand when they didn’t get what the teacher was saying. He didn’t realize that the Aide sitting with them when they were taking tests was there for him, too. He didn’t even consider it, because he had made a decision nearly three years before that he was going to work up to his potential in life with absolutely no excuses.
My son, full of determination, character, and confidence has become a man that I truly admire. My son, Christian Storm Swafford, is twelve years old. My son, when faced with a decision, was “big in the moment”. He chose to use the inner strength that God had given him to reach out to others when his road was hard to travel, which is absolutely the greatest success imaginable.
II Corinthians 9:7 tells us that, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Christian was following this directive when he chose to give out of his hardship, not because he felt like he had to and not because someone made him do it; he did this because ultimately, it was what was in his heart. And that, my peeps, is what God truly wants from us.
How are you going to be big in your moment?
Catch you on the flip side!
Ang
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