Feeling Like You Don't Matter? Read This.

When I was in the hospital in February and I was wanting to delete myself… an X-ray tech walked in my room, unprompted, and looked me dead in the face and said, “The greatest gift you could ever give your family is your own happiness.”
Then he took the X-ray and left. I have never seen this man before or after.

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I knew then… God had all but slapped me. Gradually, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and decided to get up.

You’d be surprised how much your own happiness is worth. How many invisible wars are being fought just to keep you miserable.

You see when you have a chronic illness, bad news comes with the territory. You get numb to the test results, doctor’s visits, new medications— the list goes on.

But being unhappy about it all— is a choice.

I know that God knows above my own happiness, I care even more about my family’s.

Suicide doesn’t get rid of pain, it just passes it on to the people around you. As tired as I am of suffering, I don't fully belong to myself.

It is absolutely intentional that God created life to not fully be about you. You are intricately woven into systems that do not exist properly without your presence and participation.

You can’t pick and choose when you matter to people. When you heal the system heals. And when you are suffering, so is everyone attached to you— whether they say it or not.

As I grow more in my faith the simpler things get to understand. In one of the books in the bible that recalls genealogy, 1 Chronicles arrives at this guy named Jabez. We don't know much about him- all we know is that he prayed a prayer powerful enough to be written down in the greatest book that ever was, and then right after his brief story, the bible continues with more names.

Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!’ And God granted what he asked” (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Sometimes, it really is that simple.

You gotta stay alive kid.

If not but for one reason and that’s to live to see God grant you what ask. Have the boldness to ask and the endurance to live to see it happen, because God loves you and so do we. You belong.

You are seen.

You are known.

You are loved.