Things to Do… #11, #18, #25, #29

This weekend ended up being a very interesting and meaningful weekend for me. On Saturday I did enjoy having a normal day where nothing noteworthy or “blog worthy” happened except for taking a break from working on writing a college paper to play with the cat.

On Sunday, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit with two of my best friends, Jeff and his wife Lacey, in person. Jeff’s parents recently returned from an LDS mission and each spoke in a church meeting that I attended yesterday. The subject of Jeff’s mom’s talk was focused mainly on how respect related to Jeff’s parents being able to serve a successful mission where they could have memorable experiences of truly helping people.

She mentioned that it is very important to have respect for yourself, and basically not go into a unfamiliar situation doubting what you’re capable of doing, in order to more effectively help other people. As she was speaking I remembered back when I began using a wheelchair consistently, in high school, that I initially didn’t have very much respect for myself and doubted what I would be capable of doing for the rest of my life because I had lost the ability to walk.

Jeff and Lacey were players on the high school basketball teams. I was the basketball manager and remembered Jeff thanking me after each of the games, or most of them anyway, for keeping the statistics so that he could have a better chance to improve before the next game. Jeff doing that helped me to refocus on what I still could contribute rather than possibly what I couldn't. Jeff and Lacey consistently went out of their way to make sure that I was feeling like a valuable part of that team even though I wasn’t able to actually play in the games, as I would have preferred, which I am still grateful to them for. It seems as though each member of Jeff’s family was also very supportive and complementary of whatever I had going at that time in my life as well. So I just wanted to mention that I sincerely appreciate the positive impact that Jeff’s family’s kindness to me has always had on my life and that I’m grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had to associate with them over the years.