…and just like that a blog is created! I am driving home from my litany of errands this morning and Scott Stapp’s new song “Wake Up Call” comes on my radio and BOOM I am inspired.
First of all, I have to give credit where credit is due. Scott Stapp’s new album is SUPERB! I am so impressed at this mans comeback; it is all things impressive, inspiring and deserving. He had the setback, did the work and is having a kick ass comeback!!
Second, there are so many songs on this album that “do it for me” but this one inspires me and reminds me of the WHY when I simply don’t want to “adult” today. Please listen to it, the lyrics are below, and then continue reading and contemplate with me the meaning.
One day the bridge is going to break
One day the world will stand still
The sky will fall the earth will shake
There’s just so much a heart can take
This is a wake up call
How many times before you lose it all
You’re like a cannon ball
Breaking walls
This is a wake up call
Before there’s no one left to catch your fall
But you can change it all
If you want to…
Sometimes life is so insane
Sometimes we don’t know what to feel
Does God help us when we pray
Or do we face it all alone, all alone
We all get the wake-up calls however they are only effective if you actually “wake-up” and do something about it; hitting snooze is not an option.
Here are some of my defining wake-up calls that completely changed my course, my journey and if it weren’t for me listening my life would not be what it is today. I hope it inspires you to listen to that wake-up call that is happening in your life right now.
- There were so many wake-up calls that I was a part of in my first 15 years of life but they were not mine. What I will say and what I learned from “their” journey is that the wake-up call was put on snooze multiple times because the power of love drowns out that wake-up call, no matter how loud. These are times we simply have to go through it.
- My first love (no, it was not G…he was/is my TRUE love) was my first wake-up call. I fell hard and hit my head on the way down…for sure! I decided to have a baby at 17yo, I decided to quit school five months before graduation (yes, little known fact…remember it’s not how you start it’s that you finish!) and then woke up one morning (Nov. 3rd 1991) and realized I got it all wrong. Yes I loved “him” very much, but I could not “fix him” and after many crushing blows it became apparent that it was time to listen to my wake-up call. That day would be my FIRST independence day!
- My weight-loss journey would be 140 more wake-up calls, reset again and again and again. My mother would frequently ask when I was going to “hit bottom” (aka hear the wake-up call) with every health crisis that would emerge. She hoped that I would have a chance to get back up and that the bottom would not be the end. It was kidney failure that was the final wake-up call, there would be no snooze after that crisis. I woke the hell up from a lifetime of living in a body that was never mine. My SECOND independence day was December 15, 2015!
My wake-up calls are not always life-changers and not necessarily so dramatic. Sometimes they come in the form of a whisper or a tap on the shoulder. In the last year those whispers sometimes simply gave me permission to grieve, sit in front of a TV all day or just “be”…meeting myself where I was at that moment.
What are you wake-up calls? How many times have you hit snooze? What will it take to get you to wake the hell up in your own life and LIVE it? For me I do it every day. Not perfectly, but I do it because it’s what I have to do to TRULY LIVE. I can’t live a life of surviving I have fought too hard to live beyond that baseline. I am living my best life, where there are bumps in the road, but blessings to cushion the falls. Thank you for being a part of my blessings and forgive me if I have been your bump…Un-apologetically Lori.
Originally published at http://alwaysstarting.com on August 3, 2019.