Just Shut It

I’ve heard too many times in the past few days from the “Voices of Reason.” In email, instant message, Facebook comments, and real life conversation, these reasonable people have wasted an enormous amount of reason telling me all of the reasons that I can’t.

From silly wishes to full blown goals, plans already in motion and things on my wish list, it doesn’t matter what wonders my brain can conceive – there’s a negative Nelly for that. So to all those “much saner” voices I have only to say:

Stop raining on my parade!  

Do you know the things I have done? Do you know the things I am capable of accomplishing?

• I ran a marathon because I decided I wanted to. I had asthma and had never run further than a mile in my whole life. I had just had a baby when I began training and everyone I knew called me crazy. I stopped at mile 11 to nurse that baby and then kept on running. That finisher’s medal hangs on my wall because no matter what anyone said … I COULD.
•  I wanted to teach my children at home instead of sending them to school. The Voices of Doom warned that I’d ruin them. How would they ever learn everything they need to know? How could I know that I could teach them? Would they get to go to college? Well, naysayers, our eldest graduates in May and far from the bleak future that you envisioned, she got notification of a $40,000 scholarship on Monday. Ruin them? Hardly. They’re succeeding beyond even my wild imagination. 
• I joined a Crossfit gym to try and improve my health and not feel so creaky and old. That was February. I now set records in the gym. I deadlift more than my husband weighs and am going to my first competition on Saturday. I discovered that I’m not old. I’m a beast! 

•  Oh…and remember that book? The one with the insane deadline? The one that no one could meet? 220 pages written in five weeks. It has been in the Top 25 best seller list in its category on Amazon SINCE MAY!!!!

And if you know me at all, and if you’re offering me bad advice then you must think you do, you know this is the tip of the iceberg…so why are you wasting your time and energy to tell me I can’t? Why on earth would you say that I won’t?

Because here’s the deal – I dream big. I think on a grand and wild scale. It is very rare that I see an obstacle that I don’t think I can at least begin to climb. When I was young, my grandfather said I was the girl most likely to charge against Hell with only a bucket of water on my side, and he’d give me even odds or better. Guess what? I’m still that girl.

Look, I know you mean well. I know you’re trying to save me pain, but sometimes life is pain and you have to walk through it to get to the good stuff on the other side. So, here’s what I’m asking – stop telling me No. Stop saying I can’t. Don’t tell me I won’t. Because my  life is the Hail Mary pass. I say a quick prayer and go for it. Sometimes that works and often it doesn’t. Either way, I win for trying. Which means you naysayer people need to learn who you’re talking to, and you need to get on board, get out of the way, or shut the heck up.

(P.S. if you think I’ve forgotten in my rantiness that it’s God and not me, well then you really don’t know me at all.)

Thank you.