Autism, Cancer and Death – How to see life’s challenges in a new way

Well, hey everybody, and welcome back to Qualified, the place where incredible people share their stories of overcoming great adversity and loss to inspire you and give you hope. I'm Michelle Heaton. What do you do when your plans don't work out the way you hoped? How do you react when you're tested and tried and you feel like you're at the end of your rope? What would you call a life filled with challenges, including raising twin daughters with severe intellectual disabilities and autism and a wife who has cancer? Some might say it's a disappointment or a tragedy, but my guest today has a refreshing approach that he chose to take to the trials he faced in his life. In his own witty way, he refers to his life story as a circus. It's God's plan, but our circus, he says. He's been an advocate for people with disabilities and served on a host of health and education advisory committees, including board president for the Ark of Dallas and the Ark of Texas. In 2011, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the president's committee for people with intellectual disabilities in Washington DC and in 2013, he was appointed founding chairman for Texas Health and Human Services IDD System Redesign Advisory Committee, which he held for six years. He's also an author, having published his first book this year entitled God's Plan, our Circus a Family Odyssey through Autism, death and Reinvention. His name is Clay Boatwright and it's my pleasure to have him as my guest on the show today. Welcome to Qualified

Thank you, Michelle. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course. Well, Clay, I read your book and I was really inspired by it. You and your wife Carol faced many challenges over the years, and you talk about how you chose to react to everything that life threw at you, and you chose happiness and to appreciate people and all that you've been given in life. But let's get to the circus part. You refer to your life and the book as a circus, and your sense of humor just kept me smiling throughout the book, which was great. So can you start off by giving us a little bit of background about your early life raising three daughters, two with disabilities, and the challenges that you and your wife Carol faced on a daily basis?

Sure, absolutely so. Carol and I were both born and raised in Memphis, tennessee, met when I had just gotten out of grad school. She was finishing up her undergrad, I was 21. She was 20. And so we met, dated for about three years when we got married. Career took us to St Louis and in St Louis a year after we got married, so I guess I was 25, she was 24, we had our first major adulting experience and we moved to town. She went to a doctor, which is normal when you move to a new town. He checked her out. Everything seemed okay and he asked anything unusual going on. She said, well, not really, but I got this little bump on my neck. So he said, hmm, well, you don't need a bump on your neck, let's remove it and test it and see what it is. Probably nothing. Turns out she had Hodgkin's disease and Hodgkin's disease is a form of lymph node cancer. So that was our first introduction into what I call the world of adulting. So she went through six months of chemotherapy, chemotherapy and gratefully I got through that. Well, you know, lost her hair, did the whole routine, but became through it. Well, doctors suggested we wait a few years before having kids and we're like, okay, that's fine, we were planning anyway. So in that course of time we moved from St Louis down to Houston and then ultimately to Dallas and so we had our first child, blair, when we'd been married about eight and a half years. So Blair was the epitome of the perfect baby. I mean happy all the time, smiled nonstop, hardly ever cried, absolutely. It was just delightful. And Caroline and I were basking in that, but also realizing that you know what lightning doesn't strike the same crib twice. So the odds of this happening again are low. So we went booked. About three years later, after Blair was born, we decided to try again. We only wanted to have two children. Total got in his sense of humor, had a better idea and gave us identical twins. So that took us from playing two on one to his own defense pretty quickly.

So that's a lot going on. Already. Carol undergoes cancer treatment early in your marriage. You take that on together. She gets a clean bill of health. Then you have your first daughter, Blair she's now three. And then you get the news about the twins and you're preparing for that zone defense. But you told me that Carol's pregnancy seemed way different this time and that she was pretty sick and had to be hospitalized. And then the babies ended up coming seven weeks early and had to be in the NICU for a while. But that was just the beginning of some of the challenges. Talk about what happened next.

We brought him home. Carol had breastfed Blair for a year Thought it was great, the twins about the third day home. It wasn't working. So, again, everything was unusual. So, moving forward, I use the example we went from a two on one defense to a zone defense and the house management thing, which is true for many families who have twins. You understand the chaos of trying to keep up with it. So again, unlike their big sister, they cried almost constantly and it wasn't one of those where they would take breaks in terms of being upset, but they never timed it together. So it was never like they were both crying at the same time and then they were both quiet at the same time. It was like it was one or the other which meant you never had a break. There was never a time to calm down. So that went on for a while. And then at the 24 months well baby visit, we go to our pediatrician and you go to those well baby visits when they're young and they have these milestone checklist that you go through to using X number of words or they crawling or they doing whatever, and gives us the list of like 25 questions. I'm holding I think Paige and Carol is holding Mia we go through the checklist for our individual baby we're holding in, we get to the bottom and we look at each other and we realize something. Something was up. So one of us had checked anything off the list, right, which is why they have the list. Yeah, well, that's probably not good. So pediatrician came in and said yes, something's up. And he sent us two Easterseals who did some assessments and came back initially with a diagnosis of what we now call intellectual disabilities and then autism was added a couple years later and we didn't know at the time, but as time went on we discovered that their disability was very much on the severe end. So the best way to describe it is that Paige and Mia are now 23. They are nonverbal so they've never spoken in the disability world. They need assistance with all activities of daily living. ADL is what it's called. So they need help with everything bathroom related. They need help getting dressed, undressed, they can feed themselves, which is good, and they are mobile. I used to laugh that the great thing is they're mobile. The challenge is they're mobile, so they think there was a point where we call it e lopement, where they would just kind of take off. But they've gotten that out of their systems now.

Yeah, that sounds like you really had your hands full at that point. You now have the girls diagnosis severe intellectual disability and autism. You have a lot to learn about how to care for them and how your life will change going forward. But before we get into all those details, I want to talk about you and more specifically your name, because there's a place in your book where you refer to the conversation you have with your mother about your name and why she chose the name Clay. Tell us about that conversation and the significance it would have later in your life.

So I was probably five years old, plus or minus a year, and I clearly remember we were in our kitchen growing up and for some reason I asked my mother where my name came from. So my name is Clay, it's not short for Clayton, it is just Clay and I asked her you know, clay is not a family name, so grandfather or uncle Clay or anything like that where to come from. And I clearly remember her telling me that when they were wheeling her into the delivery room for me to be born, she thought about a Bible verse and it was the verse in the Bible where Jesus sped in the dirt, formed the clay from the sped and put it on my eyes of the blind man. And she was thinking that when they were wheeling her in. So thinking about him forming the clay. That's why she then told my dad what would have happened. They decided to name me Clay, coming from that. So five or six years old, I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting, I've named after something about Jesus and I would even go in the back of my memory. You know I would remember that as time went on. I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but something to think about that's every couple of years and crossed my mind. So move the calendar ahead about 35, 40 years and in Paige and Mia we've got the Boatwright Circus in full speed, Paige and Mia with their disabilities, and I was starting to get more, a little bit more into the disability community and trying to understand it a little bit better. And one day we, for a short period of time, we were attending church here in the Dallas area and Chuck Swindoll it's Stoneborough Community Church. Chuck Swindoll, fairly well-known pastor and author, is the pastor, he's the senior pastor at Stoneborough. So we were going there and one Sunday we were listening to Chuck Sermon and he's the title of the sermon is when your Gift Comes, specially Wrapped and it was about children with disabilities because he has a son with a grandson, rather a grandson with autism. So I'm taking close notes. And he gets to a certain verse, a Bible verse, one of the Bible verses he was using, and it's John 9, 1 through 3. And John 9, 1 through 3 goes this way as he, meaning Jesus, came along, he came across a man who was blind from birth. The disciples asked him, rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Well, neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus. This happened so that the power of God could be seen in his life, and I listened to that verse and it resonated pretty deeply on several different levels. So, to break it down, the first part was this happened, so this happened means there's purpose. This happened, so there's a particular purpose. What was that purpose? So that the power of God could be seen in his life. Also important to note that it was not in response to, it was not a punishment. It was not a punishment for the man, it was not a punishment for his parents. This happened for a purpose and that purpose was so that the power of God could be seen in his life, and it just resonated as the father of two children with pretty severe disabilities. That resonated pretty deep. Okay, caroline, are not being punished for some past sin, and that God can be reflected in any of us, including a page in me which most people wouldn't actually think.

Well, that's huge. You had the realization that your circumstances were not in any way a punishment. Number one, and then number two, that God can be reflected or used in any of our lives. That's amazing, Because I think it's natural to wonder about things like did I bring this about? Is this some kind of punishment for something I did? So then you started to connect the dots about that scripture, your name and your purpose. Talk about how all that happened.

One afternoon I'm at home and I decide okay, I really like this Bible verse, I want to make sure that I'm quoting it exactly. So I go into my home office and I've got several different versions of the Bible that I've collected over time, and normally I read the NIV version, but for some unknown reason well unknown, maybe a very known reason, as I was soon to find out I just have to grab the copy off the shelf, which was the revised standard, which, interestingly enough, was the version my mom used to read. So I pulled the revised standard off and opened John 9. One, two, three I'm reading through, got it and after I finished verse three, my eyes glanced down to verse six and when they did, the breath literally left my body. I was like I almost felt myself gasping for air. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck pristled up. You know, it was like you get that shiver, that kind of runs down your entire body. Because verse six is the verse where it's where Jesus bent down, spit in the dirt and formed the clay. The reason it registered with me is I've probably read verse six dozen times over the years is in most versions that is read as formed the mud. Okay, and revised standard, it's worded as formed the clay. And when I realized that it all came back from the conversation with my mom, from 40, you know, 30, whatever years ago comes flooding back and I realized this is a big deal because this verse, which is now resonating so deeply with me, ties back to something that happened to my mom, which even was being wheeled into the delivery room and actually was significant enough to form my name. And that's when it kind of registered with me that this whole there's something going on, you know. And uh, I was like I'm going to be, like I'm going to be like I'm going to be like. I wasn't sure at that time what that was, but it would soon become a little bit more clear what my purpose was. I would have a God experience not long after that. That provided clarity. That fits with us, the whole naming thing.

Yeah, that's a big deal. I love how God sort of revealed that to you and how you're now starting to see the bigger picture about the purpose and plans that were all unfolding in your life. So you referred to another God experience that really served as a launching pad for the new direction you had taken life. Tell us about that.

So it was a Friday night and Paige and Mia were having a rough night, so they were having some major behavior issues, meltdowns, kind of crying, and so suddenly Blair was upset because her sisters were upset. Uh, carol, my wife, she was kind of at her wit's end into the week end of the day she was, she was done, she was pretty fried. So I did what any good father husband household, the leader of the family, would do Right, I went to bed, you know. You know, this is what it is. Everybody's safe. They will eventually cry themselves asleep and it'll be fine. Now just go to bed, figure it out tomorrow. So I go to bed and I'm laying there and I'll be honest with you, I was mad at God. I really was. It's like in page and me are about four or five years old at that time and I'm mad at God and I'm sitting there thinking God, I did not sign up for this. Okay, I am sales and marketing guy, kind of focused on my career and trying to do the best I can by the family, but this was not kind of on my agenda. So I'm thinking God, why did you do this? Why did you do this to Paige and Mia and, to be blunt, why did you do this to me? And that's what was on my mind when I fell asleep was God, why did you do this? Now, I don't usually go to sleep mad. When a few times I do, it's almost like I wake up the next morning, matter than the night before. It's almost like the emotions marinade a little bit overnight. But that next Saturday morning I woke up totally different feeling. I woke up excited, energized, had fresh air in my lungs, I was ready to go and seize the world and the very first words that entered my head were to help people like Paige and Mia, which I immediately interpreted as to help people with severe disabilities like they have Now. I mentioned to have sales and marketing guy doing the career thing. Raising the family was not involved in nonprofits, was not involved in really any major service activities whatsoever. As sure as you and I are having this conversation, there is no doubt in my mind. I fell asleep asking God a question and he sent the Holy Spirit and answered it. I asked God why did you do this? And he sent the Holy Spirit and answered it with to help people with severe disabilities, like my children did. I believe it had to come from God, because there's no way I would have cooked that answer up on my own. That's right. That's right.

o reason I would have.

hat's how you know. So I am like well, two great things happened at that moment. Number one was it happened. Number two was I had the wherewithal to realize it had. So I'm sitting there and thinking, wow, this is a big deal, so action must be taken. What do I do? So I Googled it, of course, of course. So I go to the family computer this is 2004, 2005 and I typed four words and I'm going to ask for forgiveness. The lingo has changed over time, so I'm going to use page and me as original diagnosis, which has since been improved to intellectual disabilities. But I type four words. The four words were mental retardation, which was their original diagnosis. Dallas, where we live. Help, okay, god said help people, help people like Paige and Mia. That's what I type, hit enter and first thing that came up was an organization I had never heard of before called the Ark of Dallas, and I'm to find out the Ark system in the United States is the nation's oldest system of nonprofits helping people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Yeah, so I'm looking through that. I'm like, well, this looks like an organization that helps people like page and me. So I'm going to compress the next 15 years into 90 seconds. So I read their website on Monday morning, reached out to introduce myself. Turns out they were looking for board members. Within two weeks I'm on their board. It was a board of an organization I'd never heard of before. Within a few years became their board president. So I'm in that process. I'm meeting people, I'm meeting families, I'm getting to know the issues people face, got onto the board and became the board president of the state organization down in Austin. So in that situation, continuing to meet people. But I'm also meeting legislators and I'm meeting health and human service people, the bureaucracy, the agencies, and understanding various programs and support programs. And as I'm learning this, I'm sharing this back with the other people that I've met. You mentioned that I got appointed to an advisory committee in Washington by President Obama, so I was again able to continue the learning and the sharing back there and all along the way I'm able to help in an advocacy way, influence the system for the betterment of people with disabilities, but in an also more practical way, take the learnings that I'm getting and sharing them back with all the various people that I've met. And so in the course of really a fairly few years yeah, I'm doing stuff in Washington, doing some leadership positions down in Austin and so on. All comes from me going to bed mad at God on a Friday night and that's not exactly. It's a straight, very short bridge that went from one to the other, but anyway. So that's the first pivotal testimony, god testimony that was very influential in the impact of my life and on my family.

Yeah Well, that story is incredible and I love the fact that you reached out and sought God and so quickly you heard the answer and then so quickly the wheels were in motion. So it was certainly God ordained and confirmed. As you went through it and so so many years you were living in the home with these girls, there was a lot of you know frankly chaos and trials and challenges, and then you became an advocate for this persons with disability community Plus you were working full time and then you get some news about Carol and her health again. Tell us about all that.

So Paige and Mia stayed at home and went all through school and most of high school Blair went off to college. Paige and Mia there are a few more years and even though we had help at home, by that point it was pretty tough and, to be candid, we just ran out of gas, totally ran out of gas. But because I know the system and had lots of friends, I thought it would be fairly easy for us to find like a group home set, which is what we'd envisioned Paige and Mia moving into at some point, even though I know everybody in the disability community in Dallas. It took a year and a half to find somebody who would be willing to work with Paige and Mia because of the severity of their disability. So finally got led to an agency, a couple who were willing to work with us, and we got Paige and Mia placed in a group home just a few miles from our house. So we were able to go over as much as we wanted and still be engaged as a family as well as we could, even though we're not under the same roof. So Paige and Mia moving to their group home. That was January 2017. And a couple of months later, carol decides that she's ready to go back to work. So she went to work for someone who we had known over time and was in her job, getting used to the modern work experience. And then six months later she wasn't feeling good at work. One day, went to the doctor and found out that she had ovarian cancer. So she got that diagnosis six months after everybody moved out, went through surgery and I thought they got it all. Missed check six months after the surgery clean bill of health. We're thinking, hey, this is good. Six months after that she had another experience at work of not feeling well and found out that it had come back and she, in the course of six months, it went from not being visible to a five pound tumor. In the course of six months, went through 18 months of chemo, five different chemo arrangements none of none of them took and she ultimately passed away.

I'm so sorry, Clay. Thank you.

Yeah, it was a. It was a, it was a challenge. It's funny we look. I look back at it at hindsight and I'm grateful that we had the group home set up for Paige and Mia at that point, because at Paige and Mia been at home while Carol was going through chemo. I'm sure we would have figured something out, but it was just easier on everybody to not have to deal with that.

One more challenge.

Exactly so, Paige and Mia, they were in a good setup. Meanwhile, Carol wasn't having to have that complication while trying to go through chemo or something.

Yeah, so here you are now at this new place in life. Paige and Mia are receiving great care and located very close to your home, which is great. Blair's an adult and doing well in her career, and you and Carol would have been empty nesters, in a sense, and a new chapter would have begun. I can imagine that really pulls a rug out from underneath you. How did you respond at that point to such a devastating blow?

When we got the news it was surprising, but my view was well, for some unknown reason, god likes giving us challenges to deal with. That did not say everybody else gets to deal with, and we've done a pretty good job thus far of dealing with them. So let's do it, let's knock it out. Let's just face it yeah we're just going to do it and do work the regimens. And we just started plowing through it and it was disappointing. Every time we would go through a chemo regimen and some months later he'd come back up. It's not working, so let's try a new one. And then no one. So it's this process of elimination. So that that was a beating after a while, and certainly more for Carol than it was for me. But again I maintain the attitude of well, we keep working it until it's gone. Yeah, but the real severity of the diagnosis really didn't hit me until you guess, it was January 4th 2020. 20, you remember the big day I saved about? It was January 4th 2020. We go go to the doctor and Carol's actually feeling pretty good. So some tests she had right before the holidays seem to come back pretty good. Some metrics were looking solid. And we go to go to the doctor and we're sitting there in the exam room and he comes in with his chief nurse, doesn't say hello, doesn't say hi, how are you? Nothing. He comes in, sits down, looks Carol's, we're in the face and said sweetheart, I'm sorry but we're still seeing disease progression and there's nothing else we can do. Oh, that's tough. Talked about the air leaving the room. Yeah, and I'm sitting there hearing this and it took me a minute to register. I'm like okay. He says there's nothing else that we can do. So what was the first thing I asked was oh, so what do we do? Right? And I mean it's like okay. And then he kind of looked at me like I had three heads and I'm like what, huh? And I realized at that time this is one where this may not work out well. So I had known that and had it in the back of my head, but you don't think about it. And now I have to think about it.

Yeah, clay, that must have been so difficult for the both of you receiving that news and then having to process that information mentally and emotionally. I know you've already been through so much in your lives and you guys have truly weathered the storms together, but now this news would really take you and your faith to a new level. And so I recall in the book there's a chapter called From my Side to Christ Side, and in it you describe Carol's final moments in life, and it was really a tough read because you were describing the way you say goodbye to her and you talk about how, after that, only three days later, you had another revelation you felt was from God. That would change the way that you would view her passing and your grieving process, and I'd love for you to talk about that.

So, as I mentioned, carol died on February 11, 2020. So three days later, of course, is Valentine's Day, february 14. Blair had come back to Dallas from Nashville where she was working for her mom's services and so on, and she and her boyfriend at the time now husband wanted to go out for Valentine's Day. So they went out for Valentine's Day, go ahead, they go out. And that night I'm hungry, looking for something for dinner. So I go into a grocery store near our house, as I had a million times and I walk in there and you know, I'll be honest with you I'm pretty down, sad and depressed. Again, I'm kind of a positive guy, but like anyone, I get down. I'm thinking, okay, well, this sucks, it's Valentine's Day. It's the first Valentine's Day that Carol and I had not been together in 33 years, including the dating period. Carol was not only my best friend, but arguably my only friend, to be totally candid. She's now gone. Talked about loneliness, it was stark. And again, the holiday, valentine's experience. I'm just feeling down and depressed and I'm walking through the store doing this. What was me? Life sucks, god. Why do you keep doing these things to us? And I get to aisle nine, the haircare aisle. Why? Haircare aisle, I don't know, it may not be relevant, that's where it happened. And aisle nine in an instant everything changed. It's kind of like that Saturday morning I talked about a moment ago with me. In an instant I went from being sad and down-trodden, depressed, suddenly upbeat, enthusiastic, a smile probably came on my face and at that moment, I believe, god revealed two things to me with absolute clarity. I know where my brain went, so I know that I thought the two things. So they had to come again. They had to come from God, because why would I have? I would not have cut these up on my own, given my mental state of that moment. So God revealed two things to me with absolute clarity. Number one was Carol's doing great. She's doing a lot better than the rest of us. Yeah, she was a very strong believer in Christ and, as a result, she was experiencing what all we Christians aspire for, and that is to spend eternity with God. She's not in pain, she's not worried about the chaos of craziness going on in this world. She is doing great. So that was the first place. Was Carol's doing great? I could take satisfaction in that Relief in that. So that was number one. Number two how to do with me. So I was 55 years old at the time and I'm 58 now. So I was 55. I had been married for 30 years. So doing some basic math, god willing and I mean that literally I may still have another 30 ahead of me. So in terms of this whole adulting thing, I'm only halfway done. For the first time in my life, I had virtually no obligations and responsibilities. Blair was out of college, working in a full time job, doing great her career, got a group home set up for Paige and Mia. I'm Carol and I were their guardians, but we weren't having to do the day to day heavy lifting anymore, which was a big deal, and we've got the system set up to kind of take care of their needs. Carol is now doing better than all of us and hanging out with God, so I can quite literally do whatever I want. And I thought well, that doesn't happen very often. So the million-dollar question was okay, God, you've put me in this position, what do you want me to do with it? And that was three and a half years ago. I think the answer to that question is still being written. I think the book is part of that. To be honest with you Michelle I think you and I having this conversation may be part of that Still to be determined on those things but the realization that Carol's doing great and that I have opportunity that I would not have had otherwise, that God can use in some way, there's a certain level of excitement and anticipation attached to that, the unknown of okay, I don't know what this is going to be, but we're going to give it a shot. There's an example I've used. I don't know who quoted it first. Several pastors have been giving credit for this, but it's a nice perspective and that is. There's a reason that our windshield is huge and our rear-view mirror is small is because what's in front of us is significantly more important than what's behind us. When I first heard that, it resonated deeply because it is so true, it is absolutely true and this was really important for me with dealing with Paige and Mia and helping raise them is I never got caught up in, oh, what caused their disability or what caused their autism or, aside from me, that Friday night experience of going to bed mad at God, never really got caught up in the why why why even with Carol and then with Carol's challenges and cancer and so on. I never spent time on that. I always was focused on what do we do? What's the solution? What's the best course of action? Okay, can't solve, there is no cure for Paige and Mia's disability Okay, well, what's the best course of action to give them the highest quality of life possible? So that was always been my attitude. And with Carol's passing, the same thing applied there and God basically said don't feel bad for Carol. So, okay, what's the point of feeling bad for myself? And that's kind of been my natural attitude all along.

You know, I've talked to a lot of people in the wake of great losses and the common theme seems to be that it takes time, that the pain never completely goes away, but that in time it lessens and softens and becomes more bearable. But I really want to take this opportunity to talk with you because of the way that God truly showed you in a very short span of time, when it takes a lot of us years to get our brains around, that our loved ones, who are believers, are really doing great and that while grieving and mourning our natural and normal reactions to their loss, we can find great satisfaction and relief in knowing that they're doing way better than they've ever been, and we can actually find joy in that and then eventually purpose in our circumstances, like you have. Well, thanks for sharing that, and I love all the great points you made and the lessons you learned, because they're very good. You told us that early on you learned that your circumstances were not given to you as a punishment or that they happened as a result of something you did, but so that the power of God could be seen in your family and your lives. I love that. You learned that when we cry out to God, even in our anger, that He'll respond and guide us as we face difficult things in life. And you know that when we hear from God that we have a call to action and that we must also respond and be willing to be used for His glory. You realize that when Carol died that she is doing way better than the rest of us and you view that as God kind of moving you from that grief experience to a new place. Clay, what other lessons have you learned having been through all of this? Can you share with someone listening who needs hope right now?

So the title of the book is God's Plan, our Circus, and, yeah, it's based on my experience, but I think it can apply to so many of us where God has plans for our lives, which is important to remember. God does have plans for our lives, but it's not necessarily what we would have chosen. Something that I think I took me a while to realize, and that is God's a lot smarter than we are and we need to get over it. And sometimes we don't want to get over it because we like to think oh hey, I'm smart, I know things, I know what I want in my life and that's what I'm going to focus on. And I and we wouldn't say this next part out loud, but in the back of our minds we're thinking I'm really hoping God wants that too, you know, and he's going to, he's pulling for me, so he's going to give me what I want. Not necessarily it may be different, and what happens a lot is God has a plan for us and our job is to get on board with his plan, not for him to get on board with our plan, and that I realized that that manifested itself several times throughout my life. That's why I say that I've been blessed to have quite a few challenges. I view a blessing as anything God is engaged with. A lot of people view blessings as all the happy stuff and happy pot. Oh, I've been blessed and all happy, positive things. Well, maybe that's true, but sometimes God blesses us with things we wouldn't ask for, because he has a big picture much larger than ours, and I think the whole basis of faith is recognizing that that is in fact, the case. We all have experiences and challenges. That's absolute goodness truth. But it's all in how you choose to look at it, and happiness is a choice. That's really how I've kind of handled all the various challenges that I've had. It was my choice. Here's a given Stuff happens, crap happens in life, things that we don't ask for, that are sad and upset, from diagnoses to people passing to you name it. Stuff happens. We cannot control that at all. The one thing we can control is how we respond to it. That fact, that's the only thing we can control, is how we respond to it. So we talk about grief. It is our choice. It was my choice to sit around, be depressed and live in the past and do what was me and my life sucks and all that kind of stuff or not? Now, is it easier to say than to do? To flip that switch Absolutely? Of course it is, but it is within our control.

Yeah, I love those lessons, Clay, and it's so true that we tend to think that we're blessed when the good stuff comes, when in reality, as we both know now in hindsight, some of the best blessings can come from hard stuff that happens in our lives. Not that the hard stuff is good, but that the lessons we learn can only come through walking through the valley, and that the deepest and most profound lessons can be learned no other way. Well, Clay, I just want to thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show today. You were such a huge inspiration to me and, I hope, to others. I really appreciate you.

Thank you Michelle. I really appreciate you as well. Thank you for having me.

Of course. So for those of you listening, you might hear Clay's response to great loss and think - what? How is it possible to go from great sorrow to having peace and joy in our circumstances? You might feel like I did right after your loss and think there's no way I can do this. For years, it hurts too bad. Today you might feel like curling up in a ball and checking out today, especially now in the midst of the holiday season. But it's good to know that others have been through really difficult things and survived, isn't it? It helps to understand that there's a bigger plan at work in our lives and that we need to get on board with God's plan, not the other way around. Grief is normal and natural and it's the price we pay for love. It's not going to end one day or completely go away, but happiness is a choice, and when Clay realized he had many years of life still ahead of him, he actually got excited about what he might do with it and how he might use his pain for greater purpose. So when you're ready, you'll do that too, my friend. But for now, take it slow and breathe. Surround yourself with people and things you love and seek the support you need, and then one day, you'll be able to help someone else with the lessons you learned and your laws. Thanks for listening.