Daily Gratitude: It’s so important for us to realize this. I love the way it’s put “the obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” At the risk of boring you I will once again use a personal example to illustrate this. Although I personally felt I was destined to become a doctor because at the age of 4 God told me I was going to be one, I don’t think that qualifies as “predestined”. But that’s not the important point. I encountered one very big obstacle to my desire to be a neurosurgeon. When I was 21 I developed epilepsy. Even though it’s been totally controlled since I was started on medicine, my chance of becoming any type of surgeon, let alone a neurosurgeon, went down the drain. But God hadn’t told me I was going to be a neurosurgeon, just that I was going to be a doctor. You all know how long that took me but that’s another story. Anyway, I searched and searched for an alternative specialty and finally (well, almost finally) i settled on emergency medicine. As it turned out, though, that was only a gateway. that led to administrative medicine and then I met another obstacle- what were they going to do with me now that i had been out of clinical medicine for too long? They sent me to the disability system to “finish out my career and retire”. Well that was my new beginning. I stayed much longer and then did the same thing as a civilian for the army after I retired from the navy. I helped more people in all those years than I ever could have as a neurosurgeon and probably enjoyed it much much more. So never give up hope. Sometimes the detours you take to get around the obstacles take you on roads you never knew existed. Always have your ladders and binoculars handy so you can climb up and look way beyond those obstacles that pop up in your way.