The combination of chunky peanut butter and dark chocolate I’m eating tastes good. I admit it. I’m self-medicating with food (again) today as I lament my woes and lick my wounds. Life can be rough! At the same time, I recognize, looking back over the past few years, how much I’ve grown. Looking forward, I see great opportunity. What’s so bad about the present? Here’s what’s got me thinking…

During Brighter Life’s It Matters™ Webinar this week,  I had the opportunity to interview two amazing people, JaNae Francis and Maurice Simpson. JaNae has been my friend for several years, and she’s a reporter with the Standard Examiner. During the October 2016 LDS General Conference, we crossed paths on a street corner in downtown Salt Lake City.

“How are you?” I asked. “It’s been awhile.”

“I’m great!” JaNae replied.

“What’s been going on in your life?”

“Well, I just had surgery a few weeks ago on a brain tumor. Life’s awesome!”

WHAT? Here’s my friend, bubbly and happy, telling me that having a brain tumor is one of the best things she’s ever experienced.

Fast-forward to Thursday, January 18, 2018, when JaNae and I are sitting at a table in her husband’s television production studio filming a live webinar. Her friend (and hopefully now mine), Maurice Simpson, is with us, and we’re talking about what it’s been like for him to have a progressively disfiguring condition called neurofibromatosis.

“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” he tells us. “It’s made me the man I am today, and I love what I see when I look in the mirror each day.”

How many of us can say that? How many of us can look ourselves in the eye and love the person we see? How many of us can find meaning in our trials that is much bigger than ourselves? What does it take to be awesome?

Thank you, JaNae and Maurice, for giving me food for thought to enjoy this week that is much more nourishing than my peanut butter and chocolate.