As I mentioned last week, I was reflecting on 2015 while flying home recently. I want to share three simple moments from 2015 with you that came to me in my reflecting. These three moments weren’t the three most epic events of the year, or the three greatest achievements. These were three simple but meaningful moments – the moments that make a life worth living. Today I share moment #2….
On Thursday, September 3rd I was on a flight home, from Minneapolis to Orlando. As I was sitting in my window seat reminiscing, I stared out at the summer sunset and my mind started to drift. I typically hate it when my mind drifts, but this time it was a gift. I’m not sure if it was the sunset, the relaxed state I was in because of the three-city blitz I just did with a client, or because the summer was coming to an end and I was reflecting (again, reflecting on a plane). Regardless, I’m glad my mind started wandering because I felt the magnitude of the greatest gift I’ve ever received. The best thing that has ever happened to me. One of the earliest events of my life, but something I never really grasped until that evening…
I’m lucky. I have a great life. I can go on for paragraphs validating this point, but let’s just assume you trust me and save us both some time. I’m also very grateful for my life and everything that has led to it. However, there is one event that I should thank God and my mom for every day (my dad too, but he passed a while ago):
I was a foster child. My parents were my foster parents. They decided to adopt me.
Three sentences, sixteen words, one magnificent life. As I was staring outside my window somewhere over Kentucky or Tennessee, it hit me: I was a foster child. I was a foster child. I was a foster child. Yeah, I probably should’ve realized the magnitude decades ago, but I didn’t. My mom was so casual about it that I never let it get in my way. She talked about my adoption so lovingly, and my siblings were so accepting that it never was a topic. My girlfriends over the years were more curious about it than I was. My mind kept wandering…
Forget about youth athletics, growing up in Merritt Island, FL in the 1970s and 80s, and my fraternity experience. Forget about my degree from University of Florida, my career path that fortune laid out perfectly in front of me, and the dozens of mentors that have coached me along the way. Forget about the most unique group of friends one can have, and my wife doing everything to clear the way for me to build my business, while being a mom and continuing her career. These are among the many experiences and gifts that have led to my very amazing life. Forget all of it. If my parents didn’t adopt me, none of these things would’ve mattered.
This was a prevailing moment for me. It’s not that I suppressed my adoption. On the contrary, I’m pretty open about it and never had a problem with it – even as a youngster. However, I never took it to this level of reality: I was a foster child. The only reason I wasn’t raised as a foster child is because my parents adopted me. It’s that simple, and that powerful.
Thank you Mom. Merry Christmas. I love you.
