Transcript

Carrying #1214 · From Chad

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Love carries the weight. There's a story behind that.
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This is your daily message from Chad #12114 to upgrade your
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mental game today by telling yourself a better story.
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Because the most important story you hear is the story you tell
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yourself. This message is dedicated to
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Christine Stark. Here's the upgrade.
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You may think love is something you feel, but upgraded thinking
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knows love is something you pick up and carry.
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Here's the story. In 1996, a Navy SEAL named Matt
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Stark was diagnosed with brain cancer.
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His SEAL team called him the Pull Up King.
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Surgery left him paralyzed from the neck down.
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He spent months learning to walk, talk and eat again.
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His goal was to live to 30. Over the next 20 years, he was
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told at least three times that he had less than six months to
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live. He kept setting new goals.
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Make it to his birthday, make it to the kids first day of first
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grade, make it to Halloween. When doctors told his wife,
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Christine, to take him home, she promised to take him anywhere he
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wanted to go. He chose Alaska.
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It took more than a year, but they did it.
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In 2019, a seizure put him in a coma.
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Christine said the doctors told them there was nothing more to
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be done. Then he started breathing on his
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own and squeezing their hands. So the family took him home.
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But not to pass in Hospice, their oldest son, Garrett,
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started filming. He lifted his dad into pools,
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carried him into onto rides at Disney, carried him back across
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the sand at the beach, carried him through a cruise cabin too
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narrow for the wheelchair. His younger brothers helped,
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Garrett said. Quote.
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I wanted to show people that just because you can't talk or
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walk, you can still be part of everyday life.
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In quote, some people reported the family to social services
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for taking him out of the hospital.
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The family kept going. On June 20th, 2020, Matt died at
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a resort in Florida on a family staycation the day after his
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son's birthday party. Not in a hospital with his
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family. 24 years after that first diagnosis, they carried
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him out covered in an American flag.
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Love isn't only what you feel, it's what you're willing to
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carry. Even when a wheelchair won't
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fit, stairs to get into an entrance or sandy beach that's
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hard to walk across, love brings them anyway.
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Our culture defines love mainly by emotion, but ancient times it
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was defined by a strength that could take care of oneself and
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the ability to take care of others.
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It's a mark of maturity when there is excess capacity to care
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for more than just oneself. The better story to tell
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yourself is the strength of my love is shown in how much I can
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carry. Somebody in your life is getting
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left out of everyday life. An aging parent, a friend who
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stopped getting invited, a Co worker eating lunch alone.
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You need to pick them up and bring them along.
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You may never need to physically pick up a loved one or transport
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them from place to place, but you can pick someone up just by
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including them walking across the room and introducing
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yourself or just carrying someone in your memory.
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Go carry somebody today. Tell me a story of someone who
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carried you to from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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Send someone a text and ask them who's carried you when you
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couldn't carry yourself. You can get a free copy of my
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book, The Most Powerful Story in the World by going to from
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chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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and hundreds of others are always available at
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www.fromchad.com.