I thought it would be fun to share with everyone the rules and values that we have in our family. We’ve had some of these from Day One and others we’ve adopted over the years. I would love one day to have a sign made with these to hang in our home!
The first one……Have courage and be kind. We’ve told Callie this since she was a little baby. It didn’t matter what was happening or what the situation was, as long as we responded with courage first and kindness always then we will be successful. Courage sometime is taking one step more than you think you can. Kindness has power. Both have grit and grace.
. 
The second……bloom where you are planted. Everyone is going to go through hard times. Your best laid plans are not going to work out. Life is going to sideline you at times and give you a run for your money. In our family, we show up every day and we do our absolute best with the resources we have. Sometimes we are going to have amazing days where we smash all of our goals and hit it out of the park. Other times, it will be a very rough season…..but we will still bloom. We will look for the light in the darkness and the gold in every part of our story. We’ve realized that in the dark times, we were not being buried. We were being planted. So that we could grow strong roots……and BLOOM.
The third..….we chose joy. Every day. The most important word in the phrase isn’t “joy.” It’s “choose.” Life is too short and we want to make the most of every day. So we lean into the happy times and soak them up. We make looking for gratitude an every day habit–whether it is a new book or an amazing sunset. Those small magical moments of joy are what life is all about……we chose to be in love with our life. Every messy, complicated, perfectly imperfect part of it. Joy is a decision, sometimes really brave one, about how you are going to respond to your life.
The fourth is……you can sit with us. Obviously with our experiences with Callie and my chronic disease, we are an inclusive family. We don’t look at the world in terms of “normal” but we focus on embracing what makes us unique and special. Everyone has their own abilities and gifts and we celebrate them all. We’ve understood what it felt like to be excluded at times, so we are always looking for way to open our arms and include. We are a family of helpers and look for ways every day to give back to those around us.
The final one is we do our best. We are a family that sets goals. We constantly are trying to be better than we were the day before. Our best doesn’t have to be our neighbor’s best or our friend’s best…..it has to be our best personal effort. We do the work and have a growth mindset. We aren’t afraid of hard work and we know we can do hard things. We are ok with being beginners, because we know that no one ever started out as an expert. For us, doing our best is more important than being the “best.”
No Comments