My success in living a quality-filled life is using hardship to my advantage. The difference between winners and losers is that winners do what losers don’t want to do. When you chose your behavior and attitude, you chose your life. When someone abuses their body, they should not be surprised when sickness comes. The hardship is when you do everything right and yet come under attack. When you play by the rules by never smoking and you still get lung cancer. ….
But, I have come to the understanding that life is not fair. That even though I took care of myself, it did not stop the sickness, it only prevented the sickness from taking my life. It gave me the chance to fight another day.
I saw my life as a piece of carbon. Carbon is used in some way in almost every industry in the world. It is “used” for fuel in the form of coal, methane gas, and crude oil (which is “used” to make gasoline). It is “used” to make all sorts of materials including plastics and alloys such as steel. It is also “used” to conduct electricity. My life was always “used” by others to produce something they needed. However, I wasn’t being used up. The heat and pressure that I was experiencing transformed me physically and mentally. It hardened me so that I can be stronger than the affliction. Did you know when pressure and heat are applied to carbon its molecular structure changes and it becomes a diamond? Diamonds are used because it is difficult for them to be broken. And when placed against any structure (glass and steel) the diamond will cut it. The way to test a diamond is not to look at it, but to place it under pressure. If it does not break, it is a diamond.
When I went through my transplanted kidney failing people wondered how I was being so positive. I wasn’t crying saying poor me. The reason why was I had been hardened from the previous hardships, polished by the negativity and cut by adversity. And for this reason, when I was faced with going on dialysis again, it didn’t break me because I had transformed into something that could not break and was still shining through it all. The cuts caught the light and allowed me to sparkle.
If you do not stay in the heat and pressures of life. …. If you jump out of the fire, you will never be hardened to a person that can not be broken. The lies will break you. The whispers, the theft, the lack of love will take you down and defeat you.
Once during surgery, I was allowed to stay awake. This was a biopsy of my transplanted kidney. As they were sticking a long needle into my belly to transverse the narrow path to my kidney, I made no sound. The head surgeon said, “You didn’t feel that because of the damaged nerves from the previous surgeries and transplant. The surgeon who was doing the surgery (her first) was sweating and looking at me to see how I would react. I said, no I didn’t feel it. The head surgeon then said, “I bet you will feel this.” The new surgeon proceeded to pierce my abdomen with Excalibur. As she was going in, sweating, nervous, the head surgeon saw me grimace in pain, but they had to keep going. They had not reached the destination in my body. As he spoke to me the newer surgeon looked up to hear my response and see my face while in pain. “Yes, I feel it!” I then raised my head and looked at the new surgeon and said, “But I like pain!” She laughed and proceeded without being nervous. She continued calmly because she knew it did not hurt me. She saw I would not break because I was a diamond.
I have had four surgeries since that day and I am still UNBROKEN. I am still SHINNING.
Shine like a Diamond
Refuse2BFeeble
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