Don't call me lucky.
I've been told many times in my life that I am lucky. In recent years I've been hearing it more and more until in fact this week someone dubbed me the luckiest person they have ever met. Out of kindness and humility I won't say "oh please I'm not lucky" because lucky is a convenient word that easily comes to mind and is more commonly used to explain my situation than what is truly happening in my life.
This week I met Bobby Bones, Natalie Stovall, and Kane Brown (they are all country musicians). We took pictures I got autographs. I wasn't the only person to have this experience there were at least 20 others doing the same thing at the same time.
I've met Martina McBride so many times that I started getting her to autograph things for other people. But I'm not the only person who has this same experience. Maybe I'm just the only one your know :)
I once won two separate meet and greets with Carrie Underwood for the same performance. I think I was the only one who had that particular experience but I was not the only person who met her that day.
I've won or been given free CDs, t-shirts, concert tickets, signed merchandise, food, money, furniture and maybe some other things I can't recall. Recently I was one of several hundred thousand people who successfully purchased Adele tickets (that could almost be categorized as a miracle).
I've lost more contests than I've won. I've used a lot of gas, time, and money to obtain some of these things.
When I was about 10 years old and playing soccer I kicked a corner kick that went directly into the goal. Then I did it again. Without any teaching, training, or knowledge of the how, I had successfully performed a banana kick.
In 4th grade I was one of a dozen students in choir who auditioned and were placed in 5th grade chorus. That same year my AIG teacher awarded only me with the "Miss Congeniality Award" and I had to go home and look up the award because I didn't know what it meant. As a freshman in high school I was promoted from junior varsity to varsity a quarter of the way into the basketball season making me a 4-time varsity letter holder (another teammate was move up about halfway through the season. In our senior year we were co-captains of the varsity team). I've never broken a bone, although I have jammed half my fingers, chipped a bone in one, and had my pinky dislocated where it was sitting at a 45 degree angle from the finger next to it. But never broken a bone.
But please don't call me lucky. (And if you keep reading hopefully you'll see I'm not bragging either)
I found a single gray hair in my head when I was 27. I work anywhere from 36 - 52 hours a week on an irregular schedule and get paid the same amount no matter what. I've never played baseball but I had my lip busted by a flying bat, my cheek bone nearly fractured by a foul ball, and pretty much any time I'm at a game someone in the crowd gets hit by a foul ball or bat. --see how luck can turn on you!
The preceding paragraphs are lengthy but barely scratch the surface of really exciting things that have happened to me. I could go on and it has been fun for me to recall some of these moments but that's all they are right now, moments. Little dots that connect themselves in my life to a thing that is far greater than luck... Call me blessed. Because it is the accumulation of all the above plus more that make my life seem impressive. Lucky is "happening fortunately". Luck is "the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities".
Let me tell you what's really impressive and why I am more blessed than lucky.
When I close my eyes and think about the ways I have been given preferential circumstances I see:
Luck is a seemingly random occurrence. Luck can be bad and good. What I am experience is a lifetime of intentional and deliberate good. Consistent and fulfilling goodness that touches everything I do. When I meet a musician, buy great venue seats for a concert, lead a life group, or impressing colleagues at work I am making intentional, deliberate, and calculated moves. This stuff isn't random. If you're not in line you don't get called on. But the consistency with which I am selected and the weight of importance it carries for me and those around me is what I really get excited about. I like to win because I go after things that matter to me. Meeting Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood meant something important to me because their music and the way they choose to live their lives has changed my life. Winning that furniture is important to me and my family because for the past 20 years we've been sitting on it. Winning $50 on the radio was important to me because I used the money to help buy supplies to take on my first mission trip. My pastor often says "if it matters to you, it matters to God!" I believe that statement is true because I'm living it.
To be blessed is to be "divinely or supremely favored; fortunate" and "blissfully happy or contented".
So I ask you, please don't call me lucky. Call me blessed.
The best is yet to come,
~Adwoa
I've been told many times in my life that I am lucky. In recent years I've been hearing it more and more until in fact this week someone dubbed me the luckiest person they have ever met. Out of kindness and humility I won't say "oh please I'm not lucky" because lucky is a convenient word that easily comes to mind and is more commonly used to explain my situation than what is truly happening in my life.
This week I met Bobby Bones, Natalie Stovall, and Kane Brown (they are all country musicians). We took pictures I got autographs. I wasn't the only person to have this experience there were at least 20 others doing the same thing at the same time.
I've met Martina McBride so many times that I started getting her to autograph things for other people. But I'm not the only person who has this same experience. Maybe I'm just the only one your know :)
I once won two separate meet and greets with Carrie Underwood for the same performance. I think I was the only one who had that particular experience but I was not the only person who met her that day.
I've won or been given free CDs, t-shirts, concert tickets, signed merchandise, food, money, furniture and maybe some other things I can't recall. Recently I was one of several hundred thousand people who successfully purchased Adele tickets (that could almost be categorized as a miracle).
I've lost more contests than I've won. I've used a lot of gas, time, and money to obtain some of these things.
When I was about 10 years old and playing soccer I kicked a corner kick that went directly into the goal. Then I did it again. Without any teaching, training, or knowledge of the how, I had successfully performed a banana kick.
In 4th grade I was one of a dozen students in choir who auditioned and were placed in 5th grade chorus. That same year my AIG teacher awarded only me with the "Miss Congeniality Award" and I had to go home and look up the award because I didn't know what it meant. As a freshman in high school I was promoted from junior varsity to varsity a quarter of the way into the basketball season making me a 4-time varsity letter holder (another teammate was move up about halfway through the season. In our senior year we were co-captains of the varsity team). I've never broken a bone, although I have jammed half my fingers, chipped a bone in one, and had my pinky dislocated where it was sitting at a 45 degree angle from the finger next to it. But never broken a bone.
But please don't call me lucky. (And if you keep reading hopefully you'll see I'm not bragging either)
I found a single gray hair in my head when I was 27. I work anywhere from 36 - 52 hours a week on an irregular schedule and get paid the same amount no matter what. I've never played baseball but I had my lip busted by a flying bat, my cheek bone nearly fractured by a foul ball, and pretty much any time I'm at a game someone in the crowd gets hit by a foul ball or bat. --see how luck can turn on you!
The preceding paragraphs are lengthy but barely scratch the surface of really exciting things that have happened to me. I could go on and it has been fun for me to recall some of these moments but that's all they are right now, moments. Little dots that connect themselves in my life to a thing that is far greater than luck... Call me blessed. Because it is the accumulation of all the above plus more that make my life seem impressive. Lucky is "happening fortunately". Luck is "the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities".
Let me tell you what's really impressive and why I am more blessed than lucky.
When I close my eyes and think about the ways I have been given preferential circumstances I see:
- My parents who love me (in the annoying yet unconditional way that only they can)
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- My siblings and nephew who are objectively attractive, intelligent, kind, and well rounded people who make me feel included (even though they take photos like this without me).
- My good friends who probably have more influence over my life than they will ever realize. When I was in fifth grade I wrote angrily on my bedroom wall that the only reason I go to school is because of my friends. (As a 5th grader I wasn't aware that it was also the law). I have really good friends who are individually great people. I'm proud to introduce people to my friends.
- The people who are in my world for short seasons. They have taught me many things and allowed me to grow and deposit things into their lives even when I had no training and hardly the life experience to do so. These people were/are good people. They made me laugh, they made me cry, they made me angry, but either way they made me. Phone calls from them in the middle of the night for me to help them not hurt themselves, being asked by a stranger for money and gas, talking and walking with a homeless man who told me that "homeless people want to look nice too", making art together, playing sports together, praying together, listening to complaint after complaint while I silently and secretly rejoiced that I didn't have much to complain about, replacing my flat tire and showing me the proper way to put oil in my engine, learning about death/loss/suffering/abuse, talking about our heroes, celebrating your successes, etc. I realize this list won't mean as much to you as it means to me because I can't go into detail of all these encounters. But the sum off all these dots is that I was trusted by others to enter into some vulnerable space in their life for a brief moment and occasionally with some I would let them into mine.
- My health. With the way I treat my body I'm not really sure how I'm living as seemingly well as I am. Don't worry this year I have a specific goal to get some preventative care and other needed treatments.
- My ability to lead others. Even when I am so weak and uninformed. I think about these experiences with gratitude and add it to my list.
Then I open my eyes with a smile on my face :)
Luck is a seemingly random occurrence. Luck can be bad and good. What I am experience is a lifetime of intentional and deliberate good. Consistent and fulfilling goodness that touches everything I do. When I meet a musician, buy great venue seats for a concert, lead a life group, or impressing colleagues at work I am making intentional, deliberate, and calculated moves. This stuff isn't random. If you're not in line you don't get called on. But the consistency with which I am selected and the weight of importance it carries for me and those around me is what I really get excited about. I like to win because I go after things that matter to me. Meeting Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood meant something important to me because their music and the way they choose to live their lives has changed my life. Winning that furniture is important to me and my family because for the past 20 years we've been sitting on it. Winning $50 on the radio was important to me because I used the money to help buy supplies to take on my first mission trip. My pastor often says "if it matters to you, it matters to God!" I believe that statement is true because I'm living it.
To be blessed is to be "divinely or supremely favored; fortunate" and "blissfully happy or contented".
So I ask you, please don't call me lucky. Call me blessed.
The best is yet to come,
~Adwoa
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