CAN I DO IT? CAN YOU?🤔

In life we all have many challenges. One of mine is the weather where I live. Especially in winter. It seems the older I get, the harder it is to deal with the cold and snow. This year, I vowed to make the best of it and try to maintain a more positive outlook. For a while, mother nature seemed on board with this. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the snow was slight. My attitude seemed to remained elevated. This was good news for my family and friends. I thought to myself, “Neil, you just might do it this year!” Then, mother nature had a wicked grin.

I leave for my day job a little after 4am Monday to Saturday. This morning I woke up to over a foot of snow. As I trudged my way to where my car was parked, I saw it also was covered in snow. Upon reached my car, I discovered it was more ice than snow. Nothing starts the day off right like spending ten minutes chipping ice off your vehicle just to climb inside. Once inside, I began to defrost the windows. Once they were clear, I headed out. Trying to focus on the fact I was grateful to have a vehicle that ran. The plow that went through left a small ridge of snow in it’s path. I had to cross it to get out of the parking lot. As I did my car erupted in a chorus of sounds. None of them were very friendly. It would appear the snow had damaged some vital part of the exhaust. This happened on a Saturday. My mechanic is not open until Monday.

Driving around with a car loud enough to wake the dead is embarrassing enough, but now the temperature, which was doing just fine, is going to drop to ten degrees below zero. This makes my loud car, should it start, quite necessary. It would appear that my resolution to maintain a positive attitude is receiving quite the test. I must remember that is what the world does. I refuse to let it get the upper hand. This is not done alone. My friend CJ jokingly reminded me that some kids are trying to make their cars louder, in essence, I just gave myself a free upgrade. My friend Kurt offered his mechanic. Of course my lovely lady and her smile will keep me warm on the inside. There are my self-improvement skills I not only teach, but practice myself, that will keep me humming along.

All of this serves to remind me that tests are a part of life. They give our resolve strength. They require us to change our focus on what we do have to be grateful for in order to make it through them. It also gives us a platform to demonstrate to others, by our example, that they too can make it through their challenges. When we embrace life’s challenges and put them to work for us, we grow. When we let them get us down, we become less of who we could be. I am going to do my best to grow from this challenge and I invite you to do the same with the challenges in your life.