Encouragement: Patrick Henry story part one

Okay,

So it occurred to me today that I had promised my readers my review of Patrick Henry’s new book, I Am Potential: Eight Lessons in living, loving and reaching your dream. I apologize for my tardiness in posting on this topic, but I was hoping for new developments in terms of disability related news. As this did not seem to be happening, I figured this would be as good a time as any. Many of you may remember me talking about Patrick Henry in a variety of blog posts. This amazing young man had overcome so much and done his best to live a life without limits, inspiring millions of people in the process. Born with a variety of disabilities ranging from limited use of his arms to life without sight, the lessons he can teach people are remarkable.

He begins the book with the most important lesson one could learn throughout his experiences of having a disability. That lesson: Acceptance. Not only for himself, but for his parents as well. Or as Patrick puts it, “When life hands you lemons, accept them and be grateful.” At first glance, this may seem like an unspoken lesson for the Hughes family, but it wasn’t always that way . John had always dreamt of a son who could spend hours with him playing catch, but that wasn’t possible with Patrick. They had go of such dreams and hope for the best. After all, “You can’t move forward until you accept where you are,” Patrick says.

In the face of such adversity, one wonders if things would have been different had they known about Patrick Henry’s disabilities. Of course, abortion wasn’t an option for them; but would they have handled it differently had they known? Patrick Henry answers the question with something his mom always said, “It’s another example of how the best blessings could be right in front of you but you don’t see them because you forget that God is always there working things out behind the scenes,”

We’ve all heard these things before: “God never gives you more than you can handle” and “you have to move on and accept what is “. These are just some of the many pieces of advice that the Hughes family received.

Instead of denying the reality of the situation, they coped and adapted to their new life as a family. John’s philosophy was: “If this was a, so be it. We’ll survive; no, we’d do more than that . We’ll do all we can to make the situation better. I felt that in my heart but I truly had no idea of the magnitude of our challenges..”

After all, what does wishing do? It gets us no where.

Stay tuned for more inspiring quotes from the book in later posts. I apologize if everything seems disconnected, but I am trying to bring you what I thought was most important.