To say I live an alcohol-free life would be a lie. I am surrounded by alcohol almost everyday and have been for most of my sobriety. It wasn't until recently that it dawned on me that I wasn't living an alcohol-free life as I had been proclaiming, but rather I was living a life free from alcohol!

Our trials and tribulations are meant to shape us into the person we were created to be. We can either allow these adversities to weigh us down and hold us back or we can use them as opportunities for growth. I have been sober for the last three, going on four, years and I wish that I could say that once I had my sobriety things got easier, but they didn’t. I was still faced with hardships, some I could control and others I couldn’t. The biggest thing that did change was how I chose to respond to them, by NOT drinking, I faced those hardships head on and worked on shifting my mindset to find the lesson to be learned. I stopped to find the underlying issue to my emotions and WHY I was feeling the way I was feeling, rather than try to run from it.

This last year has been HARD, and honestly that is an understatement. I have had everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve ripped out from under me, on more than one occasion, and I’ve had people use what I’ve told them in confidence against me. I’ve been accused, manipulated and taken advantage of more times than I can count. I have been judged for my sobriety, for wanting to make a better life for myself and have spent countless hours defending myself.

In every one of these situations I was left broken and defeated. I allowed these situations to floor me and fill my mind with self-doubt. I began to think I wasn’t good enough, that there was something wrong with me, that I am in over my head, But after the tears subsided and I laid there in defeat I was able to find clarity and see things I couldn’t before. I still don’t have all the answers, but what I do have is my faith.

Last fall I attended an event called Live2Lead. It is a leadership event put on by The John Maxwell Company in Atlanta, GA and is broadcasted LIVE out to hundred of host sites all over the world. I’ve had the privilege of attending many leadership events where John Maxwell delivered a keynote, but this one in particular really stuck with me. He talked about failures and how we have to test those failures by ‘failing forward’. He expressed that it is okay to stay down in times of failure [or in this case adversity] to learn from it. When faced with adversity we tend to get back up and fight, it’s like we are constantly running into a wall and ending right back down again without ever analyzing the situation as to why it happened or what we could take away from it. As John Maxwell said at Live2Lead 2018 ‘Stay down’ and ‘Don’t get back up until you learn!’

There is a reason behind what we go through and sometimes we cannot see it right away, especially when we are so close to the situation, but there is a purpose for everything and you must have faith. Let your heart feel the emotions, if you need to cry, cry! Take the time for you to figure out why you’re feeling the way you are feeling and acknowledge those feelings. Analyze your current situation and see what you are supposed to see and ask yourself ‘What am I supposed to learn from this’ or ‘What can I learn from this?’. Remind yourself how much you’ve already overcame and that this too shall pass!

“Your adversity does not define your quality of life unless you let it.” —Hal Elrod