Do you ever feel like your life is one big steamy pile of...um... poo? Call it what you will...droppings, dung, muck, cow patties, poop, crap, or...yeah....truth is, there are days when the crap show seems relentless. Sound familiar? Yeah? Me too. I get it.  

Someone once said that one of the prettiest plants they had ever seen grew in the middle of a big pile of manure.

Now, I will admit, I'm not a gardener, not at all. Truth is, I can barely keep a cactus alive. I definitely missed the day when God was handing out green thumbs. Even so, one doesn't have to be a horticulturist to know that one of the best fertilizers used to help plants grow is...you guessed it...manure.

Yep, organic matter taken from animal waste.
Animal waste...let that sink in.

Who, in their right mind, was the first farmer who looked at his cow's latest cow patties and thought "I'm going to mix this in the dirt, plant some seeds, come back in a few weeks, pick whatever veggies grow, and then serve it fresh for me and my family to enjoy for dinner..." Honestly, he probably was friends with the fella who looked at the egg that came out of a chicken and proceeded to fry it up or scramble it into one amazing breakfast food.
 
Don't run too fast past the farmer mixing his prized cow's poop in the dirt. Think he might have been on to something? I would imagine he got some pretty strange looks from the neighbors, had to endure some intense questioning from his bride, and his kiddos probably refused to eat his poop infused vegetable tray.

But...what if...
What if he, in fact, was on to something?
What if he saw something?
Something hidden in plain sight.

You see, our farmer friend actually WAS on to something. He saw beyond the surface. While everyone else saw the obvious waste, disgust, and filth...he looked past all of that. He saw something that still had value, even if it was wrapped in extremely undesirable conditions.

he saw what was hidden right there in plain sight.

By now, you're probably asking "What's the point of all this poop talk?"  And, right on cue...might I add.

I want you to think of one of those moments in your own life that rocked you to the core. Whether it was a moment, a season, or what may have seemed like a lifetime, the preverbal poop hit the fan. You may very well be in this moment as we speak. Navigating these "crap shows" are one of the hardest things you will ever do. You do everything you can to just try to survive...and you probably don't even have the energy to think about next week, much less the growth that can happen through it. And let's face it, in seemingly calm times, you and me both have said things like this..."There is a reason for the pain..." or "You're going to be able to help so many people because of _____." But in situations like this when someone turns and says that same thing to you while you're in the middle of it, you can't help but think... "Yeah, keep your fortune cookie talk to yourself or I'm going to punch you in the face."

• The crap show gets us disoriented.
• It gets us self-preserving.
• It causes fear, anxiety, and depression.
• It puts us in survival mode.
• It makes us hyper sensitive to what others say or do.
• It ignites the fires of anger. 
• It leads to guilt and shame. 
• It makes us the victim.
• It keeps us paralyzed. 

I don't have a step by step process to get you out of the situation you're in right now, BUT what I do have is a little bit of experience. That experience saw me isolate myself, slap on a fake smile, take out my frustration on those I loved, sink deep into depression, etc. I began to doubt everything I knew to be real. Then, as I was floundering, the mask began to fall off piece by piece, so on top of the already deep pile of poop it seemed my life had become you could add guilt, shame, and embarrassment to the top.

Why do I share this with you? Cause I want to just give you a little bit of hope. Next week, we're going to drop our first TruthBeTold episode on our new YouTube channel and podcast and I am going to be talking about some of the specific lessons I learned through these experiences, but before that, like I said, I want to create even the smallest spark of hope in the middle of whatever it is you may be facing.

Just like that seed that is planted in the manure enriched soil, you, surrounded by the stench of the manure that has just been dumped in your life, have also been handed vital "nutrients" that can and will sustain you both right here and now and in the future when this current reality is just a distant memory.

If I am being totally honest, its hard to find the right words to say here. Your reality, and the chaos and noise it creates in your heart and mind, screams so much louder than the point i am trying to make...and those screams demand your attention. So, before we infuse some vital nutrients into our situations that will help set us up to begin navigating our way through, we must do a little bit of pruning of the weeds and thorns that are not only choking the life out of us, but also preventing our minds from being acceptable soil that we can be planted in.

So I'm simply going to ask you to listen to me and trust me while I lay out a few simple truths that are not shaken by the shit.

• Your value as a person is not impacted by your mistakes or by your circumstances.
• Those mistakes and those circumstances, they do not deserve the sacrifice of your mental, relational, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. 
• Those mistakes and those circumstances, they can not demand from you what you are unwilling and/or unable to give.
• You have permission for your feelings and emotions to be all over the place.
• You do not have permission to quit, while at the same time, you do have permission to take a step back. 
• While you're taking that step back, reality is this: Growth you never even imagined was possible is now within reach.  

And if you can't make sense of anything at the moment, all I am asking of you is this...just trust me...cause I am walking proof that the crap show does not have to win.

-Trey