One of those days…

I’m fairly certain everyone has had one of those days. You know those days that nothing goes right, that everything seems to be working in such a way to purposely make your life harder and more stressful. I had one of those days a little while ago, and trust me; it was really on of those days. Our team left a school at about 2:30 and after about a four-hour drive, through a snowstorm, we stopped for dinner. We only had a 25-minute drive after that but we soon found out that it wouldn’t be that easy. The road was closed. We ended up driving an extra 3 hours, through a blizzard to the high school we were suppose to be staying in that night….suppose to be staying at. We soon found out after knocking on the door for a good while in the freezing cold, that there was no one there to actually let us in. Eleven-thirty at night in the freezing wind and snow with no place to stay. Not exactly the happy ending we were hoping for. In desperation we found ourselves at the elementary school down the road, and just out of luck we found that a few teachers had actually been snowed in for the night. They graciously took us in and shared their coffee and chips and dip with us! As we were all sitting around a teacher explained to us that in all her 25 years at the school she had never had to stay over night. She then continued on with a humorous tone about how the first time she’s had to they end up taking in desperate strangers!

Through all the struggles there was some positive, we went to bed that night, warm and with some amazing new friends. Needless to say an early morning, little sleep, and a recovering twisted ankle didn’t exactly set me up for a fantastic positive day. Despite all this however I found myself almost bouncing off the walls with energy and excitement, thinking; today is going to be a good show, someone’s life is going to change today. As we loaded onto the freezing bus in the snow it wasn’t too hard to miss that some of the other team members weren’t really feeling the positivity today… this shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering the night before. The load in and set-up was rather rushed, and as the students started loading in I began to get goose bumps. I could have blamed them on the cold but the butterflies in my stomach could not be. I searched the faces and paid special attention to each individual I could spot, wondering to myself whose life would be changed by this presentation. Would they listen?

The feeling that today was going to be a good show wouldn’t leave me. The show ran as usual and afterwards I got to talk to some amazing kids. Time passed, and most of the kids had left for lunch, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that no one had come up and talked to me about how the show directly influenced them. But then I remembered when LiveDifferent came to my school and how they encouraged me so much and even though I couldn’t find the words to tell them, they still made such an incredible impact on my life. So even though a student hadn’t come up to me I still found myself hopeful in the belief that there was someone out there and that we did change their life. Just as this thought went through my head a girl came up to me. We started talking about the show and I asked if anything impacted her personally. We then ended up having an amazing conversation about her life and her struggles and just how much she appreciated what we shared. She had been struggling with family issues, fitting in and overall accepting herself. I could have given her advise about everything and broken it down for her, but I believe she simply needed someone to listen. She is an amazing girl and I told her that. I also explained that she should stay true to who she is because the person that she is is going to accomplish incredible things. I believe now more than ever that I need to fight for that passion and excitement every day, because you never know how much of a difference it is going to make.