Yesterday my daughter Traci dropped a heavy block of wood on her foot and broke a toe.  The pain was agonizing but there a was a deeper disappointment that drove her to tears.  She had trained and raised support to run a half-marathon to benefit “Coopers Troopers” an organization dedicated to helping the families and siblings of children who have faced life threatening disease.   As she sat on the couch sobbing with her face in her hands, she heard tiny voice of her three year old son, Tyler.  “You want me to pray for you?”

Many years ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a television commercial promoting beer.  The commercial featured several young people precariously perched on a catamaran sailing through the water.  As spray hit the lens of the camera, a dramatic voice announced, “You only go around once! Reach for all the gusto you can get.”  Then the ad encouraged the viewer to drink their beer.

The ad was brilliant and deceptive.

My friend Danny de armas and I had just hiked three miles in the mountains of Colorado. Now we stood staring up almost a mile at the 12,900 foot ridge we had to to cross to make it back to base camp.

We had been on our feet almost all day.  It seemed that with each foot we gained in elevation the packs grew heavier and my legs grew weaker.  I had been watching my feet to see if they were still moving.

A distant sound made me look up.  Black menacing storm clouds were flexing their muscles in the west. Could we beat the storm? It was an important question.  The last thing we wanted is to be caught on the top of a treeless ridge with lightning stomping around us looking for the easiest route to the ground.  Three quarters of the way up the ridge, carrying fifty pound packs that felt twice that heavy it became clear that this was going to be a close race. You don’t want a race with lightning to end in a tie!  

Last week I had the privilege of speaking to a group of bright, enthusiastic students attending the 2011 speech and debate camp run by Training Minds Ministry. 

At the end of my presentation the founder of this group, Chris Jeub, asked this question, “If there is limited time to teach children the essentials of Math, Science, History, Literature etc, then why invest time and money to teach children the skill of speech and debate?”

My answer was emphatic. 

Thank you to each of you who responded to my blog “Living Outside the box! Doing it when you don’t feel like it!” This is an important part of life that will be covered in my new book, “Fully Alive.”

If you haven’t read that blog and the comments my friends left, click on the link above and read the very inspiring stories of how my friends face difficult circumstances.

I promised to give you my response to the question, “How do you keep doing it when you don’t feel like it?”

So here it goes.