I did something last night that I haven’t done in a long, long time: I stayed up until 2 AM reading a book. 

Good stories, especially true stories, intrigue me more than anything.

Walk to Beautiful by Jimmy Wayne is a captivating story of one man’s troubling childhood and how he became successful despite the trials. 

There was no way I could put the book down.

No matter how many chapters I said were the last.

No matter how many times I told myself, “30 more minutes, Audra.”

How could I stop now? The story was holding me captive! 

Jimmy lived in a world raging with violence and with no sense of normalcy, but he still had hope.

This one fact is amazing to me.

 

We are all hardwired to hope, which is why I think the saddest thing to see is hopelessness prevail. A sense of utter hopelessness is the #1 reason people commit suicide.

What I love about Jimmy’s story is how he wrestled hopelessness to the ground, tied it up, and ended it’s life–not his own.

Inspiration is awesome, no doubt, but inspiration that leads to change? Yes! Sign me up!

The biggest obstacle Jimmy faced as a boy was loneliness because people saw him as another juvenile delinquent when he was just an innocent kid. He only knew darkness; he’d only seen glimpses of light.

Many children in foster care face the same challenge. They want to do better, but no one’s ever modeled what that was for them. Or, in the worst of cases, they’ve succumbed to hopelessness.

All it takes, though, is one person reaching out to help. 

And that’s all I could think about last night as I turned page after page….