Today Is: How You Play the Game Day

“The trick is not how much pain you feel but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.” – Erica Jong

“We can’t change the cards we were dealt, just how you play the hand.” – Randy Pausch “The Last Lecture”

“Just because we’ve been… dealt a certain hand… it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above – to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted.” – Stephanie Meyer “Twilight”

I’ve heard it said before that life is not about the hand your dealt but simply how you play the game. Sometimes in our lives we are dealt the best hand imaginable while other times it’s everything short of a royal flush. And much like in the game of poker, the losing hands we’re dealt are what make the wins that much more wonderful. The challenges in life tend to teach the lessons that allow us to in time understand the joys. As I am approaching the two week post-surgery mark I have some days that feel like the royal flush and then there’s some that I’d rather just flush out of my memory, however it seems during my toughest days and in my most painful times I’m awarded with the greatest prize of all… a life lesson. As I agonized in pain today, allowing my knee some therapy in the CRM machine (a machine that was described to me as physical therapy without the therapy; something I must use at least 6 hours out of the day) I laid and watched TV. While doing so I witnessed a man talking about a bowtie that he was wearing that represented spinal curve disease. He told the audience that when he was seventeen he underwent surgery to straighten out his spine and his fifteen year old daughter had just undergone the same treatment so tonight he was wearing the bowtie in her honor. As I listened to him say this, I spoke my thoughts out loud, “See, I could be having spinal surgery. It could be worse.”

When dealt this hand I thought I had been given the worst, yet it turned out to be a much better hand after the flop, I guess it’s true; life is all about how you play the game.

“Thank you God for giving me many challenges but the eyes to see the blessings.” – unknown

“Step through the pain I will make you something great.” – Gil Jones