{"id":545,"date":"2018-06-25T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T15:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/the-power-of-adversity\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:14:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:14:28","slug":"the-power-of-adversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Adversity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019m taking a little \u201cNana\u201d moment to celebrate my grandson\u2019s winning 1st Place in his Original Oratory Speech at the NCFCA National Championships this weekend. Out of 1000s of students from 45 states, competing in 65 preliminary tournaments, 500 students made it to Nationals. Payton’s win is truly a tribute to his diligence, hard work, and relentless attitude. The win comes with scholarships offered and afforded him the opportunity to deliver the speech after the competition to over 1,500 people. I was blessed to be able to watch it LIVE, thanks to technology! I am always a proud Nana of my grandchildren, and this just added another notch on my \u201cpride and joy\u201d belt. Beyond the pride, however, was the speech he gave that truly described his own story of overcoming adversity and helping others to realize that adversity can be a friend to those who recognize God\u2019s way of building our character and our ability to overcome and come out as a conqueror. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Power of Adversity\u201d was the topic of this speech. In it, Payton talked about the tension and adversity that we encounter and the more we experience, the better the trajectory of the potential of success in our future. He used the analogy of his Toys R Us bow and suction-cup arrow, as a child, which did well to kill his \u201crefrigerator bad guy\u201d, but it paled in comparison to the real bow and arrow that his dad bought him, set the tension to Payton\u2019s ability and he soon learned this arrow could fly three times further because of that tension. <\/p>\n

He went on to point out world changers and history makers like Thomas Edison whose teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything. And, Abraham Lincoln who failed in business, marriage, politics and suffered the loss of his two sons before becoming the President of the United States. Every adversity these leaders experienced increased their patience, their knowledge and their ability to create history. Payton quoted Walt Disney \u201cAll the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Payton went into his own story of adversity. In the same year: his Papa died from cancer, his dog died, and he was being bullied at school. He said, as he pointed out his thin body, \u201cI\u2019m not the most athletic kid but I sure wanted to play football and fit in with the other guys.\u201d Instead of helping him, they bullied him and the abuse only got worse and the verbal hatred got louder. The words spoken over him replayed like a broken record in his mind \u2013 \u201ctoo skinny, you\u2019ll never amount to anything, you\u2019ll never be good at anything\u201d. With many hilarious, self-deprecating moments throughout his speech, his message was clear: “When adversity comes, like the storm that came up while Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat, let it be that storm that takes you to the other side\u201d. <\/p>\n

Payton\u2019s speech resonated with me too. We all have defining moments that either make or break us. Whatever those moments are, God will use them for our good. Our destiny and purpose are wrapped up in each and every adversity that comes our way. It’s that “stuff” that causes the aha moments — those moments that seemed like the worst of worst times but were actually the turbo boost to propel us to where we were meant to be. The times of adversity either make us stronger and cause us to have the “warrior mentality” or we succumb to the pressure and throw in the towel and have the “pull-the-blanket-over-the-head mentality”. One makes us stronger and leads to success and the other causes us to quit and leads to failure stories. They’re either stories that said “I pushed through to victory” or “I gave up and quit. IF ONLY….I had persisted.” From Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Edison to Payton Wallace, great leaders and achievers push themselves beyond the point of failure and take a step back to re-evaluate why they started the journey in the first place. Even when their body or mind told them to quit, they dug deep and pushed through the adversity.<\/p>\n

My parting paragraph is Payton\u2019s final words from his speech. I pray these words to speak to your heart:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going through today. Maybe you\u2019re facing financial adversity, a broken relationship, or even if you\u2019re just like me\u2026.you look in the mirror and you feel inferior and worthless. Jesus is in the back of the boat with you. He has a way of using every adversity and every difficulty to propel you to the other side of your breakthrough. Now, personally, I\u2019ve grown to fight greater enemies than my refrigerator and I know that God uses every adversity in my life to prepare me and propel me to become a leader worth following. The same is true for each and every one of you. Adversity is not your enemy. Tension is not your foe. Instead, embrace it. Peace isn\u2019t the absence of adversity. Peace is the confidence in knowing that all things \u2013 even the seemingly worst things — work together for good when you put your faith and trust in God.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m taking a little \u201cNana\u201d moment to celebrate my grandson\u2019s winning 1st Place in his Original Oratory Speech at the NCFCA National Championships this weekend. Out of 1000s of students from 45 states, competing in 65 preliminary tournaments, 500 students made it to Nationals. Payton’s win is truly a tribute to his diligence, hard work,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2438,2439,2063,2440,1507,1888,2441,2442,2443,2444,2445,1518],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-adversity","tag-all-things-work-together-for-good","tag-bow-and-arrow","tag-history-maker","tag-ncfca","tag-stronger","tag-tension","tag-the-power-of-adversity","tag-thomas-edison","tag-walt-disney","tag-world-changer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8292,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}