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.
A ROLE MODEL
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!
FOUR
Love the Perfectly Imperfect You
One 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 rig
ht 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.
The kind of self-love and self-acceptance I’m advocating is not about loving yourself in a self-absorbed, conceited way. This form of self-love is self-less. You give more than you take. You offer without being asked. You share when you don’t have much. You find happiness by making others smile. You love yourself because you are not all about yourself. You are happy with who you are because you make others happy to be around you.
But what if you just can’t love yourself because no one else loves you? I’m afraid that is simply not possible. You see, you and I are God’s children. Each of us can count on His unconditional love, His mercy, and His forgiveness. We should love ourselves, be understanding of our imperfections, and forgiving of our mistakes because God does all of that for us.
During a tour of South America I spoke at a drug rehabilitation center in Colombia. The addicts and former addicts in my audience had so little regard for their value as human beings that they’d nearly destroyed themselves with drugs. I told them that God loved them no matter how long they’d been addicted. Their faces lit up when I assured them, through an interpreter, that God loved them unconditionally. If God is willing to forgive our sins and love us like that, why can’t we forgive and accept ourselves? Like the daughter of the Singapore banker, these Colombian drug users lost their way because, for whatever reasons, they devalued their lives. They felt they were unworthy of the best that life had to offer. I told them that we are all worthy of God’s love. If He forgives us and loves us, we should forgive and love ourselves and then strive for the best life possible.
When Jesus was asked to name the most important commandments, he said the first was to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second was to love your neighbor as yourself. Loving yourself is not about being selfish, self-satisfied, or self-centered; it’s about accepting your life as a gift to be nurtured and shared as a blessing to others.
Instead of dwelling on your imperfections, your failings, or your mistakes, focus on your blessings and the contribution you can make, whether it’s a talent, knowledge, wisdom, creativity, hard work, or a nurturing soul. You don’t have to live up to anyone else’s expectations. You can define your own version of perfection.
SHINE FROM WITHIN
The psychiatrist and author Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said people are like stained-glass windows: “They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” To live without limits and especially to survive the darkness of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, or any major challenge, you must switch on that light within. You must believe in your own beauty and value as someone who can make a difference, someone who matters.
Finding your purpose is the first important step to living a life without limits. Maintaining hope for the future and faith in the possibilities even in difficult times will keep you moving toward that goal. But to be fulfilled, you must know in your heart that you are worthy of success and happiness. You must love yourself, just as God loves all who are faithful.
I have a friend who is so comfortable with himself, so at peace and enthused about developing his gifts, that he just seems to radiate good feelings. I love being with him. Everyone loves being with him. Why? Because he shines from within. He loves himself, but not in a “you’re so vain” way; he accepts himself as blessed, even when events don’t go his way, even though he struggles just like you and me.
I’m sure you know people who give off that same comfortable vibe, just as you probably know the opposite sort of person whose bitterness and self-loathing drive everyone away. If you don’t accept yourself, it not only leads to self-destruction, it leads to isolation.
If you don’t shine from within, it may be because you rely on others to validate you, to give you confidence, and to make you feel appreciated. But that is a sure road to disappointment because you must accept yourself first. The only important measure of your beauty and value as a person should be the one that comes from within.
I know, easy to say, tough to do. I’ve struggled with this too. As the child of Christian parents, I’d always been taught that Jesus loved me and that I was created perfectly according to His plan. Of course, all my parents’ Bible teachings and all my family’s efforts to lift me up came crashing down as soon as one snotty little kid ran up to me and screamed, “You’re a freak!”
Life can be cruel. People can be thoughtless or just plain mean. So you must be able to look inside for strength, and when that inner strength fails, you can always look above, to God, the ultimate source of strength and love.
Self-acceptance and self-love are important but often misunderstood concepts these days. You should love yourself as a reflection of God’s love and as someone put on this earth to make a unique contribution. Too many teens and adults settle for a more superficial meaning when they buy into the extremes of narcissism and self-indulgence. This is due, in no little part, to the cult of beauty and celebrity promoted on reality shows, movies, podcasts, and videos. When you watch those shows, it is easy to forget that life has a greater purpose than looking good, living in luxury, and hooking up. No wonder more celebrities are in rehab than in church. Too many of them worship the false gods of vanity, pride, and lust.
I can’t imagine that any previous generation has been lied to as much as the present ones. We are continually bombarded with messages that we need to have a certain look, a certain car, and a certain lifestyle in order to be fulfilled, loved, appreciated, or considered successful. We’ve come to a dangerous point in our culture when be
ing in a sex video is considered a path to fame, fortune, and fulfillment.
Don’t you think this would be a better world if the paparazzi followed college graduates with advanced degrees, or missionaries bringing medicine and hope to the poor and needy, instead of stalking rehab dropouts with rap sheets and needle scars? But all is not lost. I’ve seen huge throngs of people, young and old, attend religious ceremonies and festivals of praise, seeking contentment by learning to love their neighbor. I’ve watched teens and adults spend their vacations building homes in Third World countries and serving the needy in impoverished areas of North America. Not everyone is obsessed with plastic surgery, liposuction, and Louis Vuitton bags.
When you get caught up in material goods and surface beauty, and when you let other people determine your value, you give up too much of yourself and risk letting your blessings go to waste. After watching my DVD, Kristy wrote to me: “You made me realize what’s the point of having someone love you if you don’t love yourself? I saw you over a year ago and again today. I realized I need to tell you what you have done for me. You have taught me to stand up for myself, love myself for who I am, and just live my life the way I want to live it … Oh by the way, now that I have changed the way I feel about myself, my boyfriend has noticed a big difference in me, and he is grateful to you. He was always scared for me, afraid I might do something stupid one day and kill myself. But now I have changed, and my life is so much happier!”
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
My message resonated with Kristy because I’ve been where she was. When I was seven years old, I went home after one particularly cruel day of rejection and disappointment and spent hours staring into my mirror. Most teens worry about pimples and keeping their hair under control. I had all of the usual challenges on top of the missing limbs.