Imagine this challenge. You’re born without arms...you can’t hug a friend, hold a knife or fork, lift or carry groceries, take care of your personal needs, experience touch from your fingers.
Imagine this, also. You have no legs, as well as no arms. You can’t dance, walk, run, not even stand. No arms, no legs. What would your life be like?
Nick Vujicic, a Serbian Australian evangelist and motivational speaker, shows us. You can Google Nick on the Web. “No arms, no legs...no limits,” he says.
He was born in 1982 without limbs, due to a rare medical disorder, tetra-amelia syndrome. He’s got a head, a torso, and two little foot-like appendages that help him to move around. He has a wheelchair that keeps him vertical.
As a child, he was lonely and depressed, even attempting suicide at age 10. When his mother showed him an article about a man dealing with a severe disability, Nick realized he wasn't the only person with such challenges. He turned his life around, learning basic tasks such as writing, computer typing, throwing a tennis ball, combing his hair, using the telephone and more.
At age 17, he founded his own non-profit organization, "Life Without Limbs." He’s now based in California and travels the world with his message of finding meaning and purpose in life, no matter what.
You think you’re too fat, too old, too young, too unattractive. You can’t stand that pimple on your nose? When you see Nick in action, you can’t complain about ANYTHING.
You can see him on U-tube, golfing and swimming and surfing. And he’s got his own music video, where he sings. And he stars in a short film, “The Butterfly Circus.” He plays a depression-era man in a carnival sideshow who joins a traveling circus, learns to stand on his own, and develops his own daring act of diving from a high tower into a tub of water, from he he surfaces. He inspires others. It’s a beautifully done film.
Oh, and he’s also written books, appeared on Oprah, “60 Minutes,” and other television shows, got married to the girl of his dreams and they are expecting a baby by the end of this month.
He’s made the most of his gifts...he’s handsome, with a strong voice, a great smile, and a determination and persistence to demonstrate his message: You can do it!
God is with you!
One U-tube video shows him on stage, on a platform, moving around with his little footlike appendages, speaking to the audience with humor and charisma. He says, “you might fall down.” And he falls flat on the platform. “Sometimes in life you fall, and you feel you don’t have the strength to get up,” he says. As he lies there, you wonder: how is he going to get back up?
“I will try to get up 100 times, and if I fail 100 times, do I give up?” he says. “No, it matters how you’re going to finish. Are you going to finish strong?” He demonstrates the seemingly impossible, maneuvering his trunk back up to a standing position. So if he has the strength to get up with no arms and no legs, then we can do it...we can finish strong.
Ernest Holmes would love Nick and his example of limitless possibilities. As Holmes says,”...the possibilities of my experience are unlimited. The Spirit flows through me, inspiring me and sustaining that inspiration. I have ability and talent and I am busy using them. This talent is divinely sustained and marketed under a Universal plan of right action.”
Nick Vuijicic is playing the hand he’s dealt. And winning that hand. It’s all about choice, he says. And if you don’t get a miracle, become one.
And so it is.
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