The Letter

Dear family and friends,

2013 has been an amazing year for the McQuades! We've strengthened our marriage and had a record year in our business! We had our share of challenges, but each one served to make us stronger and better as people and we have had so much fun in the process. We've been abundantly blessed to donate over $10,000 to charity and we've set the wheels in motion to update our website and photos. Overall, it's been an amazing year.

Which brings us to 2014. I'm really excited about 2014!

2014 brings us great things from the start, kicking off with an amazing 90-day fitness challenge. I'm excited about this challenge because Nutrilite and BodyKey have really kicked it up a notch with this one! They've improved the starter kit, adding new and better products and even more amazing prizes and incentives. Plus, my awesome husband will be doing the challenge with me this time and in my opinion that makes every activity better!

We're improving our social lives by working to schedule at least one activity (but preferably more) for at least one of us (but preferably both) on every single day of the new year. I'm already off to an excellent start, scheduled all the way through next Wednesday! I'm excited about this because I always love the opportunity to meet new people. This also has the additional challenge and benefit of finding new things to do and enjoy, which is always super exciting.

I have a personal goal of reading 34 books in 2014. I've got the plan all mapped out, and I'm really excited about everything I'm going to learn! From leadership to marriage, self awareness and improvement to how to uplift and encourage others, there's lots of topics and I'm looking forward to it. I'm also starting a journaling project. The plan is to write in the journal every day (partially inspired by Brad Paisley's quote about the next year being a 365-page book). I don't know what I'll write or what it will be used for, but I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

And that's not even the half of it!

2014 is going to be so amazing, and we're both looking forward to it!

Christmas 2013

Usually this is the time of year when I do my Christmas post about how much I love Christmas and my favorite Christmas traditions and so on. I spend a lot of time reflecting on the past, on Christmas with my parents and how different it is now. In fact, this is the time of year where I start really feeling like the point of the whole year is about to be accomplished! But this year, for the first year ever, I'm at this time of year and I feel like life is so much more than Christmas.

Maybe that's weird to say.

Growing up, Christmas was what it was about. Life was life...and then there was Christmas. We all tried harder at Christmas; we were more organized, more patient, more kind. It's like the magic of Christmas swept into the house and straightened us up. The rest of the year was just stuff, and Christmas was special.

This year has been amazing. I'll post more about that later. But all of the year-round amazingness has changed my perspective on Christmas. It's not really the highlight of the year anymore. It's kindof just another day. We get to hang out with family and take a few extra days off, but that's the only real difference. Part of me is sad about losing the magic feeling, but I'm way happier to have such an amazing life that Christmas dims in comparison!

This year we've been fortunate in that we've gotten to just relax for most of the Christmas season. While others have hosted large parties for family and friends we've sat back and spent time with each other, talking about our goals and plans for next year and how wonderful this year has been. Our Christmas season actually doesn't even start until the 21st, and I think I like it that way!


We're kicking everything off with a gorgeous black tie optional party one of our clients has invited us to. We were invited last year as well and it was a truly spectacular night, so I'm really looking forward to it! Plus, I get to wear one of my fancy dresses for the first time since last Christmas, and I've lost about half a dress size since then!

The next day we're joining my husband's side of the family for a movie and dinner to celebrate his grandmother's birthday, which I'm pretty excited about not only because it's his grandma's birthday but also because we're going to see a movie I've been wanting to see and the restaurant they picked is one of my favorites....it's like a Christmas present to me from the whole family (haha). Then on Monday we're going over to my mother in law's house to help her with my favorite part of Christmas preparations - wrapping presents! And after that we're driving down to Longview to see my father in law and his awesome wife. After that it's Christmas Eve and we don't have any plans solidified for that yet but we'll probably just chill with all the corny Christmas movies on Netflix. Then it's Christmas!

Christmas is crazy for us as a couple in a way that it never was for me growing up. You see, my husband's other grandma had nine kids (his dad's generation), and all of those kids had kids (his generation), and most of those kids have had kids as well (our kids' generation). And almost all of them pack into Grandma's house for Christmas! There's only enough seats for everyone because there's a floor and I'm sure some of the aunts spend the whole time standing up and working (cooking, cleaning, etc). We're all crammed in like sardines and it's noisy and disorganized ... and yet, somehow, we all have an excellent time.

After Christmas we take a day to recover. It's just got to happen. With that much food, there's no way around it. We sleep for most of the day and it's amazing.

Then we start in on New Year stuff. We write out our goals and plans, get things organized, make more plans, and post our goals and affirmations around the house. We conference with our mentors to share our goals and plans with them, and to get input from them on where things may need to be adjusted. We get all of our accounting things in order so we can send them off to our awesome accountant at the beginning of the year, and before we know it December 31st has arrived!

It's a whirlwind, to be sure, but it's so much fun.

I'm especially excited for the new year. There's so much happening! But that's another post. Merry Christmas everyone.

A picture's worth a thousand words...

There are some moments you notice, and you just can't help loving them and wanting to hold on to them forever. This is one of those moments. It may look like a normal, slightly cluttered living/dining area, but traces of the day are there. It's all of our moments wrapped up together. I'm sitting here, on the couch with my tea and my book to close my night, and I can't help smiling. I look up, and I see this one, beautiful moment that is so representative of all of the other amazing, beautiful moments of today. It almost makes me want to cry with gratitude and an overwhelming sense of how blessed I am.

Let me show you what I mean.

Just out of your line of sight in this picture, there's my bookcase and my little breakfast bar. The bookcase is jam-packed, full of books and notebooks and binders and journals. It's time to clean up my collection again, and get rid of some things I just don't use. I love books. Three years ago I didn't own a single one. Today, I'm thinking about buying a bigger bookcase!

Only two of the books in that case are fiction, Monarch and The Breakaway, they were written by a friend of mine. I don't know her very well, and I don't speak to her very often, but when I was in a really tough spot in life she gave me a lot of guidance. She was one of the few people willing to go on a limb for me, to try her very best to help me in that particular time in life. For that I will always be grateful, I will always consider her a dear friend, and I will never get rid of her books.

The rest of my books are nonfiction. There's three bibles and a whole lot of resources about business, marriage, family, leadership, and similar topics. Three years ago I didn't own a single book, now I need a bigger bookcase because I'm constantly buying new ones. I'm learning so much, all the time! I can barely believe that the person I am today even came from the person I was three years ago, but I'm here. I treasure those books, especially the personally signed copy of Get Married, Stay Married by Paul and Billie Kaye Tsika. That book saved our marriage before it had even started. It began the transformation in my husband and I that got us back into church, and onto the right path.

Just past the bookcase is my breakfast bar. I think that's what they call it, anyway. There's candles there. Jared doesn't much like candles, but he lets me keep them around because he knows how much I love them. Especially these ones. It's really hard to find this scent except after Halloween, but for me it's always been the smell of happy times. All of my favorite childhood memories happened when the house smelled like this. It's the perfect blend of apples and cinnamon, the smell of my favorite tea. In this moment, the smell of those candles brings me not only the joy of all those wonderful memories, but also of knowing that my husband probably really hates those candles and he doesn't say a word because he loves me and he likes how happy the candles help me be.

He's amazing like that.

In the corner are the boxes and packing materials from today's product delivery. I love product day. I get to spend at least an hour unpacking, sorting, recording, and putting away my favorite everyday products! It makes me feel productive, and busy, yet somehow so at peace. Every product day means I'm one month closer to everything I've been working toward for the past three years.

On the wall, above and next to the door, are my inspiration reminders. I have our first son's name, printed in big letters, to remind me why I'm learning self discipline. I have pictures of places that we want to visit: Ireland, Italy, Germany, Peter Island, and Victoria BC, to remind me that the world is bigger than just what I can see right now. I have a picture of an old car driving down a road lined with cherry trees, to remind me to enjoy the journey. I have 70 personal affirmations, six inspirational quotes, and six pictures of the most gorgeous shoes I've seen yet...all to help me keep developing myself.

When I'm feeling discouraged, or sad, or put-down, when something hasn't gone the way I anticipated or wanted, I look at this wall. I remind myself of my son and all of his siblings, of the wonderful places we'll be able to go, of why this is all so worth it. I stand in front of this wall and read off the 70 affirmations until I believe in myself again. I often glance over at the inspirational quotes to give me a mini-lift when I need one. And the shoes? They're to remind myself to take everything one single, beautiful, careful step at a time.

Truthfully, I'm sure this wall drives my husband crazy too. He doesn't learn the same way I do and so the wall probably just looks like a bunch of printer paper and thumbtacks to him. But he knows that it helps me, and so out of love he lets me do as I please. He's pretty awesome.

The table makes me smile today, because Jared was sitting right there this afternoon when he told me that I'd gotten the pancakes right. It's a small thing, sortof. For me it's a really big deal. I've been struggling with learning (and re learning) how to cook even the simplest things. His affirmation meant a lot to me. And he was right! They were excellent pancakes!

Him taking the time to say it is also very important to me. It wasn't always this way. Not because he was a bad person or a bad husband, we just weren't there yet. There was a period of time when we barely even liked each other, much less complemented each other! Having gone through that, hearing even a small praise like "good job on the pancakes" means a lot more.

Also at that table, there's our jackets hung side by side on chairs. We spent the whole day together again. Almost two years ago we started our own company. It's only by God's grace that both the company and the marriage survived, because we started up smack in the middle of that not liking each other time. Spending a day together used to be something I wished we could enjoy. Now, just barely two years later, it is. Every day is a giant bonding experience, and I love it!

Some people have said that will go away but I don't think it will. We get so much time to talk, to really get to know each other more and really be there for each other. Sometimes we talk about stupid things, just sharing our opinion on the colors of the cars around us or the transition from chorus to bridge in a song we just heard. Sometimes we talk about serious things, like our pasts and our future. Whatever we talk about, we grow closer every day. I wouldn't trade our time together for anything, and I'm so glad that God opened a door for us to be together so much.

In the corner there's the rocking chair. I only keep it because my mother in law likes it so much and I love to make her happy. When she's not here, the chair is just a storage space for purses and unused blankets. But when she's here, we pull it away from the wall so she can sit and rock. Maybe it's so many years of being a great mom to her own kids and then the kids she "adopted," but she really loves that chair. I'm looking forward to seeing her there, rocking and holding my babies, maybe singing or telling them a story. She's going to make a wonderful grandma.

The office chair is so far away from the desk because Jared and I wanted to watch one of our favorite shows with dinner. I was sitting there, until he said I was too far away and asked me to sit on the couch with him. It's another evidence of how far we've come, and it lit up my evening.

If you look closely you can also see my weights stashed under the end table. I've been working really hard on staying consistent with my workout habit. I'm having some medication conflicts right now that are making progress difficult, but I'm determined to build the habit anyway. Once I started thinking seriously about my future, and especially about my kids, exercising got really important to me. I never want my kids to be bored or lonely because I'm too fat to chase them around the playground, and I never want them to have to worry over the health problems that are caused by being overweight. I want to be my best for them, and set a good example for them, and that means building the habit now. I keep my weights there so I have to see them every day, because if I skip a workout then seeing those weights just sitting there under the table will drive me crazy enough to pick them up.

All of that, and it's just a snapshot. Just what I see when I glance up from my book. One glance carries so much blessing, so much abundance, so much change, growth, and happiness. So much, in just that one moment. I never want to forget just how thankful and blessed I feel right now.

Advice from my personal experience: Give.

When you're struggling in an area, it gets particularly difficult to give. Your survival instincts kick in and start to say things like "That money is needed for our family budget, I can't tithe." or "There's barely enough food for us, I can't invite someone to dinner or donate to the food drive."

This is an especially easy thought trap for women to fall into, because we are naturally wired to be protectors of what we already have. Men are wired to expand, women are wired to preserve and manage. But that doesn't mean that you're immune if you're male.

The reality of the matter is that lack of any kind creates in us faulty humans a greediness that is hard to defeat. We sit like Scrooge McDuck and count our pennies, all the while wondering why we have no friends, why no one is offering to help. We aren't willing to look around and see how our pennies can be used to help someone else because we're so busy keeping them to ourselves. After all, we barely have enough. Let the rich do the charity donating.

The only cure to lack is generosity. If you want to start doing better in life, you have to give. Not because there's some cosmic law of the universe that says if you give you'll receive (which there is, but it comes with a caveat: your attitude has to be in the right place), but because giving what little you have to someone else is an act of faith. When you put that extra dollar or ten dollars or hundred dollars into the offering plate at church, or when you invite someone you know is also struggling to come share your family dinner, you're stepping into God's jurisdiction and saying "I'm going to trust that you'll take care of me."

Remember, it's about the heart attitude. Giving is so important because of the heart attitude it creates. You can't give with a heart attitude of "God, I'm putting this ten bucks in the plate and now it's your job to bring me more money." God doesn't honor a selfish heart that gives only to bribe a response.

Two years ago, my husband and I had hit a really rough spot. We were relying on the good graces of a friend for shelter and some nights we couldn't even afford the 15 cent packet of ramen noodles for dinner. Both of us are fairly unemployable, having between us just one GED in a world where Starbucks can choose from doctorates, and so we were trying to start a business that could support us financially. We put every spare penny into getting gas for the car. We were getting barely a quarter of his previous pay from unemployment and that amount put us in an income bracket that disqualified us for government assistance with food and other bills. It was an incredibly difficult position to be in, especially after the year we'd had.

In this time, my husband made an amazing decision. Before he'd lost his job he'd promised a certain amount - roughly a tenth of our income - to a charity on a monthly basis. I found out that first month that losing his job hadn't changed that decision. Before he paid any other bills, before we went grocery shopping, he wrote a check to that charity. In his mind it wasn't even a question. He'd made a promise, and he knew that God could handle taking care of us whether he kept his promise or not. His integrity demanded that he follow through and his faith promised it would work out.

I was furious. I'm not proud to admit that, but I was. I was in full on McDuck mode, thinking only about how that money could have benefited us. When my husband later continued to give what small amounts we could to those in need around us, I got angrier. It created a crossroads in my life where I had to decide whether I was going to trust God and submit to my husband, or become a nuisance and try to control things.

Fortunately, I'd already been under mentorship for a while and I'd learned to think more in terms of who I wanted to become. I wanted to be someone who trusted my husband, who trusted God, and who walked in faith. So I made the decision to do so. When the nagging thoughts in the back of my head wouldn't go away I approached my husband with humility and explained my concerns. I talked to him about how I was worried that with us doing so much giving to others, there wouldn't be enough for us. That's when he explained his faith and that he already knew God was going to get us out of this, so it was easy for him to be generous with others. He explained that God had given us an opportunity to see what he could do, and so our job was just to trust him and to put our time and what money we did have to work in faith. We did a lot of volunteer work in that time, and we never missed one of those payments we'd promised to make.

I couldn't understand it at the time, but I stuck with my decision to trust God like he did. I prayed that God would prove my husband's faith and strengthen mine. It was an agonizing few days, waiting for a miracle. Finally, something did happen - and I almost didn't see it. We paid all of our bills for that month, even paying rent to our friend who was helping us. To this day I don't know where the money came from. After that, people started inviting us over for dinner, just to hang out. With no idea of our struggle (we kept a good front because we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves), people started being used by God to feed us. For the first few months, before business picked up for us, God fed us at the tables of people we had only just met and he somehow kept our bills paid. Then business slowly started to escalate.

Today, we are abundantly blessed. Our income has tripled from what it was while my husband was working at his job, and we've been put in a position to be able to bless others. I don't say this to boast! I want you to know that God is capable of taking care of us in ways we would have never imagined. But it all starts with faith. It all starts with that one step into what we don't know, trusting that God is going to make it work. And when you have very little in life, that process starts in your heart because of your decision to have faith -which is backed up by actions like giving.

Give to prove your faith, and to increase it. This will create in you a generous spirit, and only the generous spirit can receive all that God has for us.

Halloween

Someone asked me recently how, and why, I can bring myself to participate in Halloween festivities when my mother is so adamantly against it. This person seemed very upset that I would turn from my mother's teachings so easily and I could sense that they really wanted an answer more involved than "I just do."

I didn't have a good answer at the time, but I've thought about it, and now I do.

When I left home, I stepped blindly into a world I knew nothing about. I was instantly confronted with so many views about so many things that were opposite to what I'd been taught, and I wasn't sure what the truth really was. I began, as I imagine any young person on their own for the first time does, to try things out for myself. I couldn't make heads or tails of what everyone was telling me, of what I'd been told my whole life, so I had to have some experiences of my own. I needed to form my own judgments about things, weigh each decision in my own heart and against my own understanding of what God wants from and for me. I came to a lot of conclusions that were different from my mother's, and I think that's alright. That is, after all, the point of growing up.

You see, the reality is that my mother and I have very different experiences in life - particularly in this issue. For my mom, Halloween is a throwback to a religious past she doesn't want to repeat. She's seen a lot of awful things happen in correlation to Halloween, and between that and her current convictions she's decided that it's simply not something she's going to participate in. That's okay. It's her choice and there's nothing wrong with it.

For me, the experience is entirely different. When I decided to try out Halloween shortly after leaving home, I didn't walk in blind. I knew what I'd been told, what I'd been taught my whole life about this pagan holy day. Quite honestly, I was terrified. I'd been raised with the Christian equivalent of ghost stories, fears passed down from perfectly well meaning parents and church leaders about sacrifices, possessions, curses, spells, and demonic strongholds. From a very young age these stories had been the majority of conversation throughout October and into November, and these stories had created in me a spirit of fear. I half believed I would become demon possessed just by walking out of my house that day! Every drunk person became, in my mind, a witch putting a curse on my family line. Every shadow was a demon waiting to devour me and place me irrevocably on the path to hell. Every kid in a costume was a satanist with plans to sacrifice cats and virgins.

For me, that was the breaking point.

I can't reach people if I'm scared. How can I possibly tell people about the all-powerful God that I serve and how he makes it so much easier to get through the challenges of life because of his strength and protection when I really believed that some demonic minion could take over the soul I was claiming God protected? I had to decide in that moment and for myself whether I was going to have faith in God's strength or in the strength of the dark forces around me.

I chose God. It was an easy choice, really. Something in my soul just knows that God is stronger, greater, and more powerful than any enemy I could have. I decided, that day, to be done with my fear.

Do these things still happen? Yes, absolutely. It's unfortunate, but some people really do call on demonic powers in rituals that to me seem strange and a bit frightening. Halloween isn't special here. Darkness and evil will get their feet in whenever and wherever possible. There are still very real demonic strongholds in life that people need serious spiritual warfare to break. The difference is just that now I'm not afraid of those things, and I'm certainly not going to let them ruin my chance to have a little fun.

So now I celebrate a lighthearted Halloween, a day to stay out after dark dressed in  some (probably ridiculous) costume, munching on tootsie rolls and smiling at the little princesses and superheroes in my neighborhood. I've decided to use it as a day to have fun, to get out among my neighbors and mingle, and to admire the creativity all around me. It's one day (plus maybe one more of preparation) to just take a chance to be silly. I like being silly.

I celebrate on Halloween, despite my mother's beliefs, because I'm just different than she is. We each choose to accept or avoid things based on our personal experiences and how those things affect us. My mom doesn't celebrate Halloween for her reasons, and I enjoy it as a day of ridiculous fun and a chance to take a break. I don't see it, as the person asking the question seemed to, as an assault on my mom or what she believes in. In fact, I've done exactly what she's taught me to do. I took an objective look at all of the facts available, took my faith into account, took stock of my personal convictions, and made a decision.

Now, if only deciding what costume to buy was that easy! ;-)

Intolerable Grace

My breakthrough came because of my son, who is still only a promise for the future.

Since he is the only child we have a name picked out for, he is the one I think about the most. I think about the kind of mom I want to be, the kinds of things I want to teach him, and what I need to learn or change before he gets here so I can be the best mom to him that I am capable of being.

I was sitting at my desk one morning, half asleep, thinking about these things. It's funny, but sometimes I think God waits to talk to me until that still of the morning time, when I'm awake because I'm developing habits but my brain hasn't caught up with the game plan yet. I think he waits because he knows I'm more likely to really hear him without my own brain in the way. When I get a question out of nowhere in this time, I take it to mean that God is trying to tell me something. He likes to ask me questions, and make me realize things for myself.

So here I was, staring at the beauty of a world just beginning to wake up, thinking about my son, when a question came to me:

How will you teach him to be strong in himself, to be strong in God, to have a knowledge of who he is and where he comes from that is rooted in God's purpose for him, if you refuse to do the same? 

God had a point. Kids do what they see you doing, believe what they see you believing, regardless of what you're saying to them. So how could I expect to teach my son confidence when I hated myself? How could I teach him about forgiveness when I wouldn't even forgive myself? How could I tell him about a loving God who accepts everyone and has such an amazing purpose for us if we will only listen - if I wouldn't allow God anywhere near my heart?

You see, for as long as I can remember I've struggled with not feeling good enough. In my mind and my heart, everything that went badly in my life was my fault because it wouldn't have happened if I was good enough. My parents wouldn't struggle financially if I was good enough, my mom wouldn't have heart problems if I was good enough, my best friend wouldn't have shot himself if I was good enough, I wouldn't have been another domestic violence and sex trafficking statistic if I had been good enough. Throughout my life, everything that ever happened, I took the blame for. If only I was good enough, these things wouldn't have been a problem. When I started lashing out and hurting other people because of my own pain, it was just more evidence that I wasn't good enough - after all, people who are good enough don't hurt this way, and they don't hurt the people around them.

I was living a delusion built on pride and I didn't even know it.

Trapped by feelings of inferiority, burdened by my pain and unforgiveness, I was on the outside when it came to anything about God. I'd been raised Christian, so I knew beyond doubt that God accepted me. And I resented him for it. How could he accept me? Hurt, broken, screwup me?

I didn't want to bring all of that pain to someone who would actually accept me. I didn't want someone to see everything that was wrong with me and still accept and love me. It wasn't how my mind thought the world should work. It wasn't comfortable to be forgiven without paying a penance that is even with the sin. It wasn't comfortable to be loved even though I knew - and so did he - that I was a complete mess.

I simply couldn't tolerate the idea of grace. Not for me. I didn't feel that I deserved to be accepted. It was uncomfortable to belong. I felt more comfortable - safer - on the outside where I could blame any failure on myself and where only I controlled the outcome of everything. It wasn't a happy life, but it was what I used to, and it was all that I thought I deserved. And so I stood on the outside, constantly pushing God away, refusing to be accepted. I built a wall between myself and God, I wasn't perfect enough to be loved and he was just going to have to accept that!

See the pride? That same thinking almost ruined my relationship with my husband too.

How could I teach my son that I would always love and accept him no matter what, if I wasn't even willing to let God do the same for me?

That was the moment, the breakthrough. I couldn't let myself hurt my son the way I was hurting myself.

I spent the next few days wrestling with myself. Everything in me bucked against the idea that I should let God love me. I was too broken, too messed up. Everything in me hated the idea that I didn't have to pay for the things I'd messed up, that God wasn't even going to hold it against me. I wasn't on probation with God. My record with him wasn't full of black marks for bad behavior. I wrestled with that. It was so hard to fathom that I could have a love and acceptance that I didn't deserve, that it wouldn't be conditional to my paying the price for my sins. Everything was just new and forgiven. I was just accepted.

I had to decide to accept it. And then I had to walk in that decision. I have to remind myself that I'm not holding on to this stuff anymore, not keeping people at a distance anymore. Sometimes, I have to mentally sit myself down and have a talk about it. "Don't you remember? This is what we decided. God isn't holding this against me and neither are you."

It was the breakthrough I've needed the most for many years.

Without that breakthrough, nothing would have changed. I would have kept fighting my husband's love and acceptance as hard as I was fighting God. I would have kept hating myself. I would have kept pushing everything and everyone good out of my life.

Instead, I'm happy.

Happy is a strange feeling for me, it's still very new. I'm still not perfect, and the wounds of the past are still healing, but I'm happy. I'm losing weight because I finally love myself enough to do something about the things that make me hate myself - and because my son deserves a mom who can play with him. I fight with my husband much less because I can accept that he loves me, and so he doesn't feel constantly rejected. I'm making friends because my confidence is through the roof. And finally, for once in my life, I'm not so terrified of my dreams coming true.

On the Bench

The term "Bench Player" has a lot of connotations. John Maxwell talks about it as a good thing. If you're on the bench then you're the supporting team. You're the one they'll call on when something needs to change or when the score needs to be made without the star player on the field. He advises coaches in all areas of life to have a strong "bench" - a large group of backup players who can be counted on to help them toward their goals.


Most of us understand the bench to be a bad thing. We know that if you're sitting on the bench for the whole game, that means you didn't play. You didn't get to actively participate in the victory. Sure, everyone on the team won - and when we're talking about teams that's what matters.

But nobody looks at the stats card of a lifetime bencher and says "Jerry, this guy is amazing, truly amazing! He's spent his entire life sitting on that bench!"

We know this, and so when we're on the team it takes a lot of patience and self control not to try to force our way off the bench and into the game. I've seen high school players get violent over it. "Let me play, coach! Just let me play!" They'll scream about it. They'll work harder in practice for it. They'll get into brawls with each other over it. Something inside them instinctively screams "I have a stake here, let me do something about it!"

Yet, in the game of life, so many of us are content to just sit on the bench. In fact, many of us aren't even geared up. We aren't ready to be called off the bench! We're making ourselves permanent backseat players in our own lives.

Remember when you were a kid and you had an idea of what being a grownup was going to be like? Remember the kind of house you thought you'd live in, the kind of person you thought you'd marry, the kind of life you thought you'd live?

Let me ask you a personal question:

Today, do you live in that house? Did you marry that person? Do you live that life?

I'm betting the answer to at least one of those is no.

For most of the population, the answer isn't just no. The reality is so far from where we thought we'd be that we have to follow the no with excuses. "No, but y'know, times are tough." "No, but I didn't understand the world back then."

If you have to say no, and if you have to follow that no with an excuse, you're a bench player in your own life. You put on the jersey of someone else's team and spend your day taking a beating in their game, then you come home and sit on the couch and watch TV. Sometimes you spend the weekend with a different team jersey on, but it's still not yours.

You're not looking at the score in your own game, you don't know who your teammates are, you probably don't even know what your gear looks like anymore.

As a result, you're losing your game.

What does that look like for you? Do you live in a worse neighborhood than your family deserves? Maybe your house is smaller than you always thought it would be. Maybe you're ignoring the fact that the food you eat isn't good for you, might even be killing you, but you eat it because it's what you can afford. If you're like most Americans, the vacations you take - if you take vacation at all - are disappointing, more of an exercise in playing pretend than a vacation.

Whatever it looks like, I'm betting that all in all your life has gone in a different direction from where you thought you'd be.

And I'm betting you don't know what to do about it. Most of us don't. We look around at 20 or 30 or 40 and say "How did I get here?"

The answer, my friend, is that you've been benching in your own life. You're supposed to be the star player, but you've been sitting down, sitting out.

But there's good news!

This is still your game, it's still your life, and your destiny is still to get out there and be the star player. It won't be easy. You've got to train, to rebuild the muscles you've allowed to atrophy. But you can do it. You can get off the bench and start making a difference in your own life. Start taking hold of your own victory.

If we were talking about sports, you probably wouldn't be content to spend season after season on the team but never getting to play the game. So don't be content to do so in your life.

It's your life. You have every right to win! You just have to go out there and earn it.