As I sit here listening to 38 Special, I am transported back to a much simpler time. The only worries...Do we have enough gas to make it to the Galleria to pick up our Cloves? Is this mini skirt too long? Can you see this HUMONGOUS zit on my face? Fresh out of high school, we embraced the freedom that we had waited 18 years for. Endless nights of California Coolers, Andre Cold Duck, and "Clove highs". Cruising around in a bright orange Karmann Ghia and a boy with hair the same color. We had not yet heard of cell phones, the internet, or DVDs. No one carried around a Blackberry, a digital camera, or a gun. Crystal meth was not in our vocabulary...it was all natural for us - Mother Nature's greatest herb (rolled in leopard-skin papers when we were feeling really crazy!)
I often wonder where that carefree, crazy girl went. Well, as it inevitably does, she grew up. The journey was not a smooth one...she stumbled and tripped along the way, often times falling so far down that she didn't think she could ever get back up. She did though - time and time again. And with each stumble and each fall, she learned...valuable lessons that would mold her into who she is today. She learned to not ask "why" but rather "what am I to learn from this?" She learned to be grateful for all that had been given to her in this life.
How you climb up the mountain
is just as important as how you get down the mountain.
And, so it is with life, which for many of us,
becomes one gigantic test,
followed by one gigantic lesson.
In the end, it all comes down to one word…
GRACE.
It's how you accept winning and losing,
good luck and bad luck,
the darkness and the light.
