Inspiration

Often when I share on my blog about our circumstances I hear words like inspiring, refreshing, honest, real…and to be honest, while I love to know that I’m helping others by sharing my story, I’m also a bit baffled. I truly didn’t understand why this isn’t fishing for compliments. It has made me reflect on why we respond this way to others stories, myself included.  I have many friends  whose lives I find inspiring and helps me to push forward.

When we listen to each others life story, we try and put ourselves with our strengths and weaknesses, into the story tellers life.  We try to imagine what we would do in certain circumstances.  But here’s the thing, I can’t live my friend’s life story as much as she can’t live mine. She does an amazing job, let me tell you about her and her husband.

I have a couple of good friends who are married with children. Their family decided to open their home and foster children. Babies! Babies who have needs and demands. They were comfortably out of the baby stage, out of diapers and midnight wake up calls. They knew it wasn’t easy looking after and caring for babies but they opened their home none the less.  It’s inspiring to watch as both her and her husband love these boys like their own. I smile when I think about them and the advocates they are for fostering and the need for more families to step up.  They are ambassadors in their community; helping to bridge the gap between faith community and the fostering community.

When I look at their life I’m very quick to stay, I could NEVER do that.  But the truth is, when it’s your calling, if even you imagine it to be too difficult. Somewhere from deep with in you, the inspiration rises.  You learn and grow and its often painful but one day you wake up to realize, you’re there and living the dream.  I know for a fact that these friends of mine struggled for awhile to make this decision but watching them now, its an old comfortable sweater that is your go to when you need comfort, its something natural, something they were born to do.

The same can be said of many of us.  I have many friends who are inspiring in their every days lives, struggles that they deal with daily: single parenting, special needs parents, foster parents, adoptive partents, advocates, teachers.  My list can go on and on.  I find these stories inspiring because in all of them, there is strength, love, friendship, authenticity.

I asked a friend once, if I died what do you think you’d say about me.  What would be the quality that would stick out. He said something along the lines of you don’t bullshit..you are who you are and you tell it like it is.  My tendency to overshare my life comes from this point.  I’m the person you never want to ask “how are you?” socially because you might as well pull up a chair because you’re going to get told. I don’t ask the question unless I really want to know the answers.

Truth is freedom, it frees us to be who we are and it shows others that its ok to be authentic.  Life is too short to be fake. Be honest and be an inspiration to those around you as you share your story.