Little Detours

Miracles sometimes wear disguises. They’re tucked in the ordinary and mundane parts of life that we might want to skip. Or they come right when you’re ready to give up on you or someone else. Don’t quit before the miracle happens.

Years ago, I was asked to help a boy who had all sorts of disabilities. I volunteered to help him. It turns out he helped me more. He taught me not to quit. He was my miracle.

It doesn’t matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game, you don’t get to choose the cards dealt to you, but it’s entirely up to you how you play them.

You get to decide what you’re worth, how you matter and how you make meaning in this world. No one else has your gifts, You are an original. A masterpiece. Act like it. Live like it.

When was the last time you got angry at God? Most of us are too afraid to.

God wants an authentic, honest relationship with us. It’s human to experience anger and frustration, even at God. At some point in life, we all struggle with life, with the deaths of those we love, with misfortunes and confusion and heartaches that sometimes seem endless.

There’s no wrong way to pray. Just speak from the heart. You don’t have to understand God to pray. God understands you.

You don’t have to take a giant leap or complete a five-year plan or an Excel spreadsheet. Just take the next right step.

What it is? It’s beneath all those 19 other steps that have you paralyzed into procrastination.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, pause, pray for clarity and proceed with the next right step. The next step is usually clear, but we look too far down the road at all the other steps we don’t want to take or don’t know how to take and end up doing nothing.

Once you take the next right step, the small one that IS clear, then the step after that becomes clear, and the next and so on.

Our job as survivors of cancer and other big detours in life is to bear witness, to share our experience to lighten the load for others, to carry the torch of hope to all who need a light in their darkness.

Once you’ve had cancer, you never know if you’re cured forever, so you live the hell out of the day you are in, this big, beautiful, glorious day, and give thanks for being alive to see it unfold.

Make your life a prayer. Not a quest for more money, awards, popularity, achievements, praise or fame.

A Jesuit priest used to offer this simple statement to everyone he counseled: “God is the answer. Now what was your question?”

The solution to every problem is more God. More love. More joy. More peace.

Saints aren’t perfect super-human beings who wear halos. Saints are people who know how much God loves them.

To know that fully means you live without demands on others for time, attention, gifts and constant reminders that you are loved. You are loved by the Source of all Love. It’s a radical, extravagant love that completely fills you up. Saints can see God hidden in the rest of us.

Give birth to the person you want to be right now.

Go look in the mirror and fall in love with that beautiful child of God looking back at you.

Every day you have a chance to be reborn, to give birth to yourself, to choose joy.

We all have an inner critic. They key is, do you let it run — and ruin — your life?

You, the soul, spiritual You, have the power to change your thoughts. You also have the power to ignore them, replace them or release them.

Real faith isn’t praying without ceasing. It’s believing that God heard you the first time.

When you pray like you mean it, you believe God heard you the first time. You ask, then you pause and receive your answer, without any proof. You trust that your prayer was heard, that once you hit the Send button, it arrived and you don’t have to keep pounding on the keyboard to deliver it.

The next time you pray, pause and acknowledge that you have complete confidence in a God who loves you. That God will give you “this, or something better.”