Share A Blessing

This forum category is a place where we can share the various ways that our lives have been blessed.

I will start with gratitude for a relationship with God through Jesus and of course my loving family and the comfortable life that God has provided me with. But what I want to mostly share in this post - - is one of the most wonderful blessings in my life.

It is the gift of Martial Arts and the path that my martial journey has taken. Martial Arts was - at the beginning - a very selfish thing for me. I found it, fell in love with it and proceeded to be utterly consumed by it. Without realizing it...I became obsessed with it and made it my god. Thankfully, the "Real God"...had much mercy on me and provided protection for me and my family through what I would call a strange and difficult time. I spent many years growing a successful Market Research firm that provided a lucrative living to my family. At the height of this business...I began my martial art training and through a strange set of circumstances...ended up opening my own Martial Art School. Little did I know that this journey would take the most unusual course and set me on a path that was at times unbearably difficult but has ultimately filled my life with great joy and abundantly more than I could ever have hoped for or dreamed of.

Long story short...I left the corporate world and decided to bow out of the extremely successful Market Research endeavor to focus 100% on the Martial Arts. As a result...I have learned many "HARD" lessons and throiugh it all been given a gift that I would not trade for any other. It is the gift of knowing exactly what I was created to do in this world.

I am blessed with the ability to study, practice and teach Chinese Martial Arts. As if this is not blessing enough...I have been given something far greater than that! It is the blessing of the most wonderful students that a teacher could ever even dream of having! As a teacher, it is a rare and wonderful thing to find even one who is worthy of giving your "all". Among each of you...I have found a treasure! You all make me want to give more than I have, which in turn makes me want to learn more - so I can give it you in greater abundance! How amazing is that?

Thank you for being among the greatest treasures of my life. Relationships with individuals in a group of people as unique and wonderful as the stars. I am grateful that the Martial Arts has brought us together through a venue that we all have found to be a blessing and in turn has evolved the "teacher-student"relationship into something far more!

I find it wondrous, that what started out as a selfish endeavor (to gain and achieve for myself personally), has come full-circle. To a vocation that allows me to gain as I give. I no longer grasp and strive for things that the world would call success -- money, status, achievement. God has given me all of those things in the proper season of life, to teach me what I really needed to learn. A willingness to trust in Him. God has asked me to trust Him enough to give Him back the things I have considered "dear". He has blessed me many-fold over by giving me abundantly more. To be able to do what I love, what I was created to do and share it with people who bless my life every day!