Hope and Perseverance – Lesson 6

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Welcome back to moodyspeaks. Many people have said they really appreciate me being so open and transparent with my blog. It has been extremely helpful to me being this transparent with myself. I realized from this blog, that I never understood the impact certain things have had on my life. I have found being transparent with others is helpful and healing for me.
I must admit I am still thinking about the group of boys and male teenagers I met with a few weeks ago discussing my journey in life and being a sexual abuse survivor. There is one boy whose reaction I think about everyday. It was the 10-year-old boy who cried during our talk, raised his hand and said, ” When I first got here to this facility I didn’t think I would make it”. Then after our time together, he came to me and said after hearing my story and seeing my smile, he now knew he could make it. He too was a sexual abuse survivor. I think I saw myself in him because I was around his age when I was abused. As I reflect back, I often ask, how did I bury it so well and move on like nothing happened. Even though it has haunted me everyday since in ways I didn’t realize until 1992, when I said it out loud for the first time. I know God has a plan for me to give hope to other survivors.
The interaction with the group of boys and young men helped me see one of God’s plans for me. By telling my story God wants me to help others see among other things, the importance of hope and perseverance in life.
Writing this blog for over 8 months now has confirmed many things to me. The one thing that sticks out is the importance of hope and perseverance. I believe when a person has hope, it gives us the drive to keep trying. I look back and I realize hope and perseverance has always been a driving force in my life. It was hope and perseverance that help me survive and bury my sexual abuse until I could handle saying I had been sexually abused. It was hope and perseverance that has help me have a happy life and a great family. It was hope and perseverance that got me through college, then architectural school. It was hope and perseverance that help me start a business from scratch and still be in business 25 years later. It is hope and perseverance along with many other key things in life that carry me through every day. When people asked me how I am doing, I always respond with, I was able to get up this morning and face the challenges of the day.
Hope has always helped me when I am at my lowest point, because I know I can eventually overcome the situation. I know I must persevere and push myself through whatever I am dealing with at that moment. Hope is a life line for me. In some of my earlier post I talk about the affects sexual abuse has had on me, but I know hope, perseverance and God’s grace I not only survived, I have exceeded all of my dreams.
Right now I hope those young boys and teenagers I spoke too, can heal and have great lives. I hope we can reduce the number of hurt sexual abused kids and adults in the future. I hope I can continue to grow my business and be able to share my story in a positive way to help others heal. I hope to build some incredible buildings. I hope to find new dreams that will continue to make me push myself emotionally, physically and spiritually.
The things I hope for now, provides me the energy to keep pushing myself and persevere in my second half of life. I will close with my last hope of this post; I hope every reader of this blog, finds the hope and energy to keep going for your dreams, and doing something that will make the world where we live just a little better for all of us everyday.
As always I have posted some recent pictures of nature and construction. I have attached a video of a project we are doing at Tuskegee University. It is the Tompkins hall renovation. We gutted this 100 plus year old building down to the walls only and we are bringing it back to life. I am proud of my team on this project. I love architecture and construction. Construction and Architecture is the science of building and teamwork at it’s best. Architecture and construction gives hope to the client and the builders and designers persevere through the project in search of a great project at the end.
Enjoy life and keep going for your dreams. I pray you never lose hope or the energy to persevere in life. By the way my blog just reached be reading in 50 countries.