If you, like me, are mediocre in many aspects of your life, take heart: sometimes just surviving is a remarkable achievement. With resilience, your mediocrity can be elevated and transformed into something great.

Yesterday, I underwent my 23rd vocal cord surgery to remove papilloma that restricted my speech and would ultimately restrict my airway. When this happens, to speak normally, I must push as hard as you would push at the end of reciting the ABCs in a single breath. It’s amazing how discouraging this can be. It almost always affects your conversations, but it can also affect your thought processes and mental attitude. It is empowering to have a voice and deflating to lack one.

Yesterday’s surgery began as a bloody mess on my arm, my gown and my bedsheets. It took them 7 attempts to insert a simple IV into my beleaguered veins. I’m on blood thinners so it was hard to get all the poke points to stop bleeding. The final two attempts were guided by an ultrasound-vein finder that costs more than the operator’s condo. These are highly skilled and conscientious people. It wasn’t their fault. After a lifetime of this stuff, I just have some worn out veins. Once I arrived in the operating room, the rest of the team was ready to go. Surgery by the renowned and beloved University of Michigan otolaryngologist, Dr. Norman Hogikyan, was successful. Although I have a very sore throat, today I am finding it MUCH easier to speak.

As I write this, today, October 22nd, happens to be the feast day of one of my great heroes, St. John Paul the Great. Back in the day, he exhorted us all with words that still motivate me – even through days of seven IV attempts:

For some context, my medical troubles started in May of 2003 with my first bout of cancer in my lymph nodes. After six months of chemotherapy and 6 weeks of daily radiation, I was cancer free. Then the cancer returned in 2005 and again in 2007. These relapses required some brutal stem cell transplants which intentionally destroyed my immune system. The first time it was replaced by my own stem cells, The second time it was replaced with my sister’s. Her immune system has kept all cancer away for 17 years.

Unfortunately, there has been a tradeoff. The cancer is effectively at bay, but now I’m chronically ill with many conditions deriving from these treatments. Every year I am hospitalized with things like pneumonia, sepsis, and blood disorders. I periodically need to take outpatient IV infusions for a virus that attacks my joints and skin. I now have occurrences of tinnitus, sleep apnea, IBS, cognitive impairment, transient global amnesia, and chronic fatigue. I’ve fallen and snapped my knee cap in half, and have had a heart attack that has required two surgeries to implant three stents. I currently need a bypass surgery but it has been deemed too dangerous to perform because the radiation I received 20 years ago has made my heart brittle like a rubber band that’s been in your desk drawer too long. Presently, we’re just trying to prolong my heart as long as possible without being able to surgically address the blockages.

Next to my heart problems, the virus that keeps attacking my vocal cord usually garners the most attention because it occurs so frequently, affects my voice, and requires such an elaborate remedy. This is my medical background in a nutshell.

So here is my point about resilience. There are many things I can no longer do. Whatever success I’ve had in life has come from heeding the words of John Paul II. It’s come from getting out of bed every day and simply doing the best I can, wherever I am, with what I have available. Somehow, I’ve been able to positively impact people and organizations merely by showing up prepared, with a good attitude, and doing my best. Because I am a believer and I pray every day for guidance, I believe that the Holy Spirit has taken my efforts and has enhanced and multiplied them. All of the best things I have been involved with have required the talent and assistance of many other people and opportune conditions. I’d be foolish to think that any of it was solely my own doing. But to reap these rewards, I have to cooperate with Grace. I have to show up. Showing up allows the Holy Spirit to elevate my mediocrity.

Resilience is the key. As much as possible, through all my medical complications, I’ve tried my best to show up for people. I go to work when I’m less than 100% because my work is meaningful and my family has to eat. I do my best around the house because I love my wife and children. I try to be emotionally available to those in need, because I know how important it is for them to have someone pay attention. I smile and say hello to strangers because that’s the kind of world I want to live in. It does me no good to do these things occasionally. I need to do them repeatedly.

If you are reading this and feeling a bit discouraged in some aspect of your life, have courage! It’s okay to falter, it’s okay to fall, it’s okay to pause and lick your wounds. But it’s NEVER okay to give up. You can always choose hope! You can always come back and answer the bell… and make people smile as you do it!

No matter how dark it gets, never give in to despair. NEVER! Self-pity is a poison.

I’ve learned from experience that what you contribute today might be destroyed tomorrow. Contribute anyway! Give your heart and soul. It’s the effort that matters. Yes, when you die you will quickly be forgotten here on earth. But you as a person will still be alive in a real way! Your efforts cannot be forgotten by God. Our lives on earth will have meaning in heaven.

Pray often, even when it seems like there is nobody out there listening. Love without restraint. Forgive people even when it’s hard. Be a positive influence on those around you regardless of their mood or negative attitude. Keep showing up. Only in this way can your mediocrity be transformed into something good, powerful and beautiful. If you give God permission to work through you by showing up, and showing up, and showing up, your efforts can be elevated and you will become the person you were meant to be.

Just keep showing up.