Just a few days ago during 4th of July my daughter was playing with some Morning Glory Fireworks that her grandparents bought her and like the last New Years Eve she was eager to light them up. My daughter was having a good old time. She hustled back and forth after each firework burned itself out. We had a lot of Morning Glories and since I didn’t want to stay up all night waiting for her to burn them one by one I started to light them myself. I became so focused on my own fun that I loss track of my daughter and before I knew it she’s crying for me. Pointing at her eye she tries to explain to me what happened through her sobs. After a few seconds I’m able to decipher that a spark had landed on her eye. Luckily after a quick inspection I didn’t notice anything wrong with her eye but when she went back into the house my wife learned that it had landed on the bottom of her eye lid. Not surprisingly she didn’t play fireworks again that night and I was left feeling guilty. How could I have been so careless? I’m usually the worried wart of the family but in the split second I wasn’t she burned herself. All my insecurities as a father returned as negative voices questioned my parenting. That night as I tucked her into bed I thanked my Heavenly Father for watching over her and wondered why I was so lucky.

Looking back at my life I was rarely supervised. I remember running around New Years Eve with fireworks going off all around me. We would throw fire crackers at each other and blow up whatever we could find, which included dead frogs, soda cans, dog poop and even my grandfather’s mailbox.  I can’t believe I didn’t lose a finger back then. I could call myself lucky, blessed or fortunate that I have all my fingers and that my daughter still has a workable eye. If you look at the picture you’ll see that if the spark had landed a centimeter toward the eye I’d be writing an entirely different post.

Why are some people lucky while others seem to have crossed a black cat? I’ve been on both sides of that coin and coming from experience I believe we’re always lucky.  We just don’t allow ourselves the time to count our lucky stars.  I bet if you reflect on your life there are incidences that you can label lucky even though at the time it may have not seemed that way.

For example, there was a day I couldn’t attend my classes in college and was forced to take my car in for repair, which cost me roughly 1,000 dollars.  At the time I was depressed. I was living on a student budget so money like that wasn’t growing on trees. I wanted to be with my friends at the beach. I didn’t know how I was going to make up the money. I thought to myself, “Why me?” When I arrived back home I got a message saying that the friends I would have been hanging out with had gotten into an altercation at the beach. One of them was badly hurt and the rest were shaken. The news sent me into shock as I wondered what would have happened if my car hadn’t broken down. I know I would have been with them. I could have been badly hurt if not worse. I counted myself lucky but at the same time I couldn’t shake the question, “why did my friends have to suffer that fate?”

Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes what happens is not a reflection on you. It doesn’t mean you deserve it and sometimes the things that cause us the most pain end up being what gives us the leg up. For instance, I grew up with a father who psychologically abused me. He hasn’t been there for me most of my life and I have witnessed him abuse my mother. Would I change any of that? In the past I would have said yes in a heartbeat, however, now I pause because those experiences is what make me compassionate. Those bad breaks has served as a motivation and a drive in my success. It has made me reflect on fatherhood and what it means to be a good dad. I’ve used the bad luck to fuel my good luck.

It really comes down to how you look and react to a situation. My daughter almost burned her eye and I could dwell on it or I can learn from it. I am lucky and knowing that I’ll be more careful the second time around. I’ll let her play fireworks if she wants but this time I’ll keep a closer eye on her.

This report will be one of many as I try to find all the lucky things that happen to me. In doing so I hope to remind myself when I become the “Woe Is Me Monster” that life has given me more good luck then I realize. By doing so I believe it’ll help me overcome the storms that we all face as human beings. Instead of dwelling on all the bad things that are happening I can remind myself of all the good that has happened in the past. That between the storms are moments of beauty and grace. This will serve as a reminder that even when the clouds seem to cover the light in our lives that we can hold fast to the idea that like clouds, bad times last for just a moment. Once that moment has passed the stars will shine once again.

So I challenge you to do the same. Observe and record those moments that seem lucky. No matter how insignificant it may seem. If you do it will serve as your light when the storms come. Good luck and happy star gazing.