Life Without Limits (10 page)

Our original schedule would have had us in Mumbai, at those very locations, during those attacks. You might say we were lucky, but I believe God had a plan that we could not see. That is why it is so important to have faith in the future and to keep working toward your goals even when the odds seem stacked against you.

I began this chapter talking about my left foot, a very useful little appendage. I’ve learned to be very thankful for my left foot because innovators are busy inventing nifty gadgets that work just perfectly for it. Joysticks and touch screens are some of the handiest foot devices to come my way. Even without arms and legs, I can now experience life in ways that my parents and I never would have imagined when I was a child. Though the possibilities for my life may have seemed narrow back then, the limits have been fading away thanks to modern technology and the power of believing and achieving.

As difficult as your life can be, as cruel and unrelenting as it may get, you should hang in there. My situation seemed bleak when I first came into this world, but I have managed to carve out a fulfilling life with many rewards. And if you think I’m an exception, consider the accomplishments of one of my personal heroes, the late Christy Brown.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1932, Christy was the tenth of
twenty-two children in his family, though only thirteen of them survived to adulthood. Christy entered the world with all his limbs, but he was terribly crippled, so much so that he could not move and could only barely utter sounds. At the time the doctors did not know what was wrong with him. Years later he would be diagnosed with an especially severe form of cerebral palsy.

Because Christy could not speak clearly, doctors thought for years that he was mentally handicapped too. His mother insisted that he had no problems mentally—he just could not communicate. She and other family members worked and worked with him. Then one day while Christy was trying to get something across to his sister, he grabbed a piece of chalk from her with his left foot. Due to his physical disabilities, it was the only part of his body he could control.

Christy learned to write, draw, and paint with his left foot. His family, like mine, was determined to give him as normal a life as possible, so they hauled him around in an old go-cart and then in a wagon. Like me, he became an avid swimmer. Then his mother met a doctor who helped get him admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital. This doctor later created a hospital for Christy and other cerebral palsy patients.

He also introduced Christy to literature, and several famous Irish writers inspired Christy to express himself as a poet and author. His first book was a memoir called
My Left Foot;
it was expanded into a best-selling novel,
Down All the Days
, and was made into a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis (who, by the way, is the son of one of Christy’s literary friends, Cecil). Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal. Christy eventually published six other books and was also an avid painter.

Think of the long dark days Christy Brown and his family spent wondering what quality of life he would ever have. He could move only one small part of his tormented body. He could make only a
few sounds. Yet he became a noted writer, poet, and painter and led an amazing life that was depicted in an award-winning movie!

What lies in store for you? Why would you not stick around to see how your story unfolds?

At times in my childhood I had a limited perspective. My vision of my life was so self-centered that I never dreamed there were other people in worse circumstances than mine, people like Christy Brown. Then, around age thirteen, I read a newspaper story about an Australian man who’d been involved in a horrible accident. As I recall, he was paralyzed, unable to move or talk, and confined to a bed for the rest of his life. I couldn’t imagine how horrible that would be.

His story helped to open my eyes and expand my vision. I realized that while my lack of limbs posed many challenges, I still had so much to be thankful for, so many possibilities in my life.

There is great power in believing in your destiny. You can move mountains. My awakening to the fullness of possibilities was a gradual process. At age fifteen I heard the story of the blind man in the Gospel of John. He’d been blind since birth, and when the followers of Jesus saw him, they asked their leader, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

It was the same question I had asked myself.
Did my parents do something wrong? Did I do something wrong? Why else would I have been born without arms and legs?

Jesus replied, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents.” Rather, he was born blind “but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

When the blind man heard that explanation, it changed dramatically his vision of his life and the possibilities for it. You can
imagine how this parable resonated with me as a teenager, so aware of being different, of being disabled, of being reliant on others. Suddenly I saw a new possibility. I was not a burden. I was not deficient. I was not being punished. I was custom-made for God’s works to be made manifest in me!

When I read that Bible verse at age fifteen, a wave of peace swept over me as I’d never known before. I’d been questioning why I was born without limbs, but now I realized that the answer was unknowable to anyone but God. I simply had to accept that and believe in the possibilities that He would present for me.

No one knows why I was born with my disability, just as no one knew why that blind man was born with his. Jesus said it had been done so that the works of God might be revealed.

Those words gave me a sense of joy and a feeling of great strength. For the first time I realized that the fact that I couldn’t understand why I have no limbs didn’t mean that my Creator had abandoned me. The blind man was healed to serve His purpose. I wasn’t healed, but my purpose would be revealed in time.

You must understand that sometimes in life you won’t get the answers you seek right away. You have to walk by faith. I had to learn to trust in the possibilities for my life. If I can have that trust, you can too.

Think about it: I had no way of knowing, as a boy, that my lack of limbs would help me offer my message of hope in so many nations and to so many diverse people. The hard times and the discouragements are not fun. You don’t have to pretend to enjoy them. But believe in the possibilities for better days ahead, for a fulfilling and purposeful life.

The first time I really witnessed the power of believing in one’s destiny was during a high school assembly, when I heard my first motivational
speaker. He was an American named Reggie Dabbs, and he had a tough job that day. There were fourteen hundred kids in our school assembly. The air was hot and sticky. The cranky sound system crackled and popped and sometimes just quit.

The natives were restless, but he totally captivated us with his story, telling us that he’d been born to an unmarried teenage Louisiana prostitute who had considered abortion to solve her “little problem.” Fortunately for Reggie, she decided to give birth to him. She had no family and no place to live once she became pregnant so she moved into a chicken coop.

Huddled there one night, scared and alone, she remembered that a former teacher, a very sympathetic woman, had told her to call if she ever needed help. That teacher’s name was Mrs. Dabbs. She drove from her home in Tennessee to Louisiana, picked up the pregnant teen, and took her home to her own family, a husband and six grown children. Mrs. Dabbs and her husband adopted Reggie and gave him their last name.

The couple instilled in him strong moral values, Reggie said. One of the primary lessons they taught him was that no matter what his situation or circumstances, he always had the choice of responding in either a negative way or a positive way.

Reggie told us that he’d almost always made the right decisions because he had faith in the possibilities for his life. He didn’t want to do bad because he believed there was so much good awaiting him. He especially emphasized something that really hit home with me: “You can never change your past, but you can change your future!”

I took his words to heart. He touched all of us. Reggie also helped plant a seed in my mind about having a career as a public speaker. I liked the fact that this humble guy had a positive impact on such a big, fidgety group of people in just a few minutes. And it was also pretty cool that he jetted about the planet just to talk to people—he got paid to give people hope!

As I left school that day, I thought,
Maybe I’ll have a good story like Reggie’s to share someday
. I encourage you to accept that you may not be able to see a path right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Have faith, your story is still waiting to unfold, and I know it will be incredible!

O
ne day during a tour of East Asia, I spoke to more than three hundred top business executives and entrepreneurs in Singapore. After I finished my presentation and as the hall was clearing, a dignified gentleman came rushing toward me. He looked as successful and self-assured as the rest of the distinguished audience, so his first words on reaching me were surprising.

“Nick, help me,” he pleaded.

As I came to learn, this accomplished man owned three banks, but he had humbly come to me for help because material wealth offered no protection from the anguish he was going through.

“I have a wonderful daughter who is fourteen, and for some horrible reason every time she looks in the mirror she says she feels ugly,” he said. “It’s breaking my heart that she can’t see that she is truly beautiful. How can I make her see what I see?”

It’s easy to understand the man’s distress, since the most difficult thing for parents to endure is their children suffering. He was trying to help her get through this self-hatred, which was so important, because if we can’t accept ourselves when we are young and healthy, how will we feel when we age and experience the medical problems that come with advancing years? And if we hate ourselves for some random reason, it’s quite easy to wind up replacing it with hundreds of other arbitrary and equally invalid ones. Youthful insecurities can send you plunging in a downward spiral if you allow yourself to focus on your flaws instead of your strengths.

The Bible tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Why, then, is it so difficult for us to love ourselves just as we are? Why do we so often become burdened with feelings that we are not beautiful enough, not tall enough, not thin enough, not good enough? I’m sure this Singapore father lavished his daughter with love and praise, trying to build her confidence and esteem. Our parents and loved ones can wear themselves out trying to build us up, yet it only takes one mean remark from a classmate or nasty comment from a boss or co-worker to undo their efforts.

We become vulnerable and fall into the victim’s mentality when we base how we feel about ourselves on other people’s opinions or compare ourselves with others. When you are unwilling to accept yourself, you are less willing to accept others, and that can lead to loneliness and isolation. One day I was speaking to a group of teens about how the desire to be popular often leads people to shun the less attractive or athletic kids in school. To make my point, I asked a straightforward question: “How many of you would like to be
my
friend?”

To my relief, most of the people in the room raised their hands.

But then I asked a question that threw them off: “So it doesn’t matter how I look, right?”

I let it sink in for a few minutes. We’d just been talking about how kids spend so much time trying to fit in by wearing just the right clothes, having a cool haircut, and being not too heavy, not too thin, not too tan or too white.

“How can you want to be friends with a guy with no arms and no legs—the most different guy you’ll probably ever meet—but then reject classmates because they don’t have the right jeans, or a clear complexion, or a body suited for the fashion runway?”

When you judge yourself harshly or put intense pressure on yourself, you become judgmental of others. Loving and accepting yourself as God loves you opens the door to a much greater sense of peace and fulfillment.

The pressures that teens and young adults feel seem to be universal. I’ve been invited to address young people in both China and South Korea because of concerns about high levels of depression and suicide in those rapidly developing, hard-working nations.

I arrived in South Korea just as the 2010 Winter Olympic Games were getting under way in Vancouver. It was fun to see the national pride and enthusiasm of people everywhere in Seoul when Kim Yu-Na, South Korea’s “queen” of figure skating, captured her country’s first Olympic figure-skating gold medal. Interest was so high in her quest that during her final performance trade on the country’s stock market fell to half its normal level.

I had been featured in a documentary that was seen widely throughout South Korea’s large Christian population, which led to several invitations to speak. The explosion of faith there is amazing. My hosts at the Onnuri Church told me that South Korean Christians are passionate for missionary work. They predicted that within a decade or two South Korean missionaries would outnumber North American missionaries, which is remarkable given that South Korea is so much smaller.

As we drove into Seoul, I was struck by the number of churches. The capital city is said to have the three largest Christian churches in the world. Although just one hundred years ago Christians in South Korea were few, nearly a third of its 48 million people now call themselves Christians. One of the churches I spoke at, the Yoido Full Gospel Church, has more than 800,000 members who attend services at twenty-one churches.

Friends of mine visit South Korea just to tour the churches. The prayer meetings are incredible with out-loud praying and the ringing of bells to signal each new program. Yet even with this strong spiritual growth, the people have high levels of stress because of the strain of long hours at work. The pressure in the schools is also intense because of fierce competition to be the best. Many young people are stressed by the feeling that first place is the only worthy
place. If they don’t get the top position, they feel they’ve lost. I encourage them to know that failing an exam doesn’t make them failures. We are all of value in God’s eyes, and we should love ourselves as He loves us.