Finding Purpose While Tubing (As a Quad Amputee) with Wendy Wallace the Most Positive and Happy Quad Amputee You’ll Ever Meet

Brad Miller 0:05

actions that you took in order to break, you

Brad Miller 0:09

know, break these patterns to deal with a

Brad Miller 0:12

situation at hand and then developing your

Brad Miller 0:15

spiritual life and choosing to trust God over,

Brad Miller 0:19

you know, being beaten down or distrust God

Brad Miller 0:22

because this bad thing has happened. Let's

Brad Miller 0:25

go for a minute about the disciplines or

Brad Miller 0:29

the lifestyle or the things that you do now that

Brad Miller 0:33

maybe you took it for granted before, or that you

Brad Miller 0:36

just do differently now. And about how you use

Brad Miller 0:40

this opportunity that you've been given in order to,

Brad Miller 0:45

you know, be productive in life, you know, not

Brad Miller 0:47

everybody does. So some people are just going to

Brad Miller 0:48

give up. What are you doing now I'm going I've

Brad Miller 0:50

talked about disciplines or practices, or habits

Brad Miller 0:53

or lifestyle, tell me a little bit about that, how that works out.

Wendy Wallace 0:58

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I

Wendy Wallace 1:00

do is grab my coffee and open up my Bible.

Wendy Wallace 1:04

Because when I've when I start with the Lord,

Wendy Wallace 1:07

my day goes better. And then also, you know,

Wendy Wallace 1:10

I have a business that I rent from home, and I

Wendy Wallace 1:14

am his CEO, he's the owner of my business, and

Wendy Wallace 1:17

I need his guidance to direct you know what I am

Wendy Wallace 1:19

going to do on the business today? This is you

Wendy Wallace 1:21

business, show me how to do it. I, you know,

Wendy Wallace 1:26

with the physical aspect of things, being able to

Wendy Wallace 1:31

manipulate around the home after a couple of

Wendy Wallace 1:33

months, I did get prosthetics on my legs. So I

Wendy Wallace 1:39

can, you know, put them on in the morning,

Wendy Wallace 1:41

take them off at night. And it's as if.

Brad Miller 1:45

So you're able to maneuver around the house

Brad Miller 1:47

things like this. I'll just ask you a couple questions.

Brad Miller 1:51

If I go play, I shouldn't go you let me know,

Brad Miller 1:54

are you using a wheelchair? Or are you able to walk?

Wendy Wallace 1:57

Nope, I am fully independent. I walk, I don't use prosthetic arms,

Wendy Wallace 2:03

because while I had them in the beginning, they

Wendy Wallace 2:06

were fairly useless for me. So I, I keep this stylus

Wendy Wallace 2:11

strapped to my wrist. And if you can see it there.

Wendy Wallace 2:14

This is what I used to type with, or you know,

Wendy Wallace 2:17

read a book, or dial the phone.

Wendy Wallace 2:21

But yeah, I'm independent.

Brad Miller 2:23

So you've managed, the obstacles, the

Brad Miller 2:28

physical obstacles that you've had, you've found

Brad Miller 2:31

new patterns and new ways to figure that out

Brad Miller 2:34

to get through that. Fair enough. And so you're

Brad Miller 2:39

also found some patterns may be new, and some

Brad Miller 2:44

may be affirmed in your spiritual life and in your,

Brad Miller 2:48

in your other aspects of your life that you are

Brad Miller 2:51

focusing on now. More intently. So let's go to

Brad Miller 2:54

how this whole process is that has impacted

Brad Miller 2:57

your relationships with other people, your

Brad Miller 3:01

marriage, or your family, your friends, your

Brad Miller 3:02

church folks. Has it? Is it different? Is it the

Brad Miller 3:06

same as it strengthens? Is it? How's this kind of

Brad Miller 3:10

worked out in your relationships? Is it still an affirming party?

Wendy Wallace 3:13

Oh yeah, I would say it's strengthened,

Wendy Wallace 3:15

everything is strengthened. You know, even

Wendy Wallace 3:20

when I was still in a wheelchair, my family

Wendy Wallace 3:23

never considered me as handicapped. They

Wendy Wallace 3:27

always knew that whatever I decided to do,

Wendy Wallace 3:29

I was going to do it. And in the beginning,

Wendy Wallace 3:34

I didn't have quite that confidence. But I'll tell

Wendy Wallace 3:40

you a story. Because just a perfect example

Wendy Wallace 3:43

of this, my daughter came to me one day and

Wendy Wallace 3:46

said, Mom, we're going to go tubing, I want to go

Wendy Wallace 3:49

down to the nearby river and get in the inner

Wendy Wallace 3:51

tube and go floating down the river and

Wendy Wallace 3:53

you're going to come with me? And like

Brad Miller 4:01

Was it something you did before?

Brad Miller 4:03

Was this something you did before you had your

Brad Miller 4:04

situation where you two person? Okay,

Brad Miller 4:09

so there's a whole new experience.

Wendy Wallace 4:11

I tied to this because it was the

Wendy Wallace 4:14

pivotal moment where I got that sadness

Wendy Wallace 4:20

behind me. And the realization that I could

Wendy Wallace 4:26

do more than I was giving myself credit for

Wendy Wallace 4:28

because I was doing all the mom's stuff.

Wendy Wallace 4:32

But I had so many doubts about, my future

Wendy Wallace 4:35

and what I was going to do with it. And so we

Wendy Wallace 4:38

went to Bing. And I had so many people say,

Wendy Wallace 4:43

you know, you should write a book. This is an

Wendy Wallace 4:46

amazing story. Write it down. I was like, no, no, no,

Wendy Wallace 4:48

I'm not a writer. Well, when we were out there

Wendy Wallace 4:51

floating, we were talking about all this stuff that

Wendy Wallace 4:53

we could write about. And it became evident

Wendy Wallace 4:59

to me that I was far more capable than I was

Wendy Wallace 5:02

giving myself credit for. And I knew I was an

Wendy Wallace 5:06

encourager. Just that's my thing. I'm an encourager

Brad Miller 5:13

so it sounds like your kids, your daughter,

Brad Miller 5:16

or do you take you on this, knew of some

Brad Miller 5:19

aspects about your personality that need to

Brad Miller 5:20

be brought out, she, you, she needed to encourage

Brad Miller 5:23

you, in order for you to kind of have a breakthrough

Brad Miller 5:26

to continue your get it done. aspects of your

Brad Miller 5:30

personality because you had been kind of assaulted

Brad Miller 5:33

here, literally, your body had been assaulted.

Brad Miller 5:35

And now you had to get through that. And that's,

Brad Miller 5:36

that's good. That's what I'm getting. I think people

Brad Miller 5:41

get through bad things and adversities in many ways.

Brad Miller 5:47

And one of them is our own personal actions

Brad Miller 5:50

that we take and their connections with God.

Brad Miller 5:51

And then the part of the processes, also loving relationships.

Brad Miller 5:58

You gotta have those where we give love, where we

Brad Miller 6:01

are loved, and where we give love and where we

Brad Miller 6:05

are loved. And then also the encouragement part

Brad Miller 6:08

of that, and that's what you had. And that's awesome.

Wendy Wallace 6:10

Yeah, and it's just evidence

Brad Miller 6:12

Said that to some of the celebrants

Wendy Wallace 6:14

that, you know, my family never saw me differently.

Wendy Wallace 6:19

I was the one they had to overcome I am

Wendy Wallace 6:21

handicapped mindset, even though I worked

Wendy Wallace 6:25

really hard, but it was still there.

Brad Miller 6:30

Well, that's cool that your family did not treat

Brad Miller 6:34

you like something different than whatever.

Brad Miller 6:38

Sometimes people get treated less than for much

Brad Miller 6:43

less physically dramatic reasons that what happened

Brad Miller 6:45

to you, you know, they may have, I don't know,

Brad Miller 6:48

somebody didn't go to college, or somebody

Brad Miller 6:50

had a, you know, something bad happened to

Brad Miller 6:53

them to get arrested or whatever, you know, yeah,

Brad Miller 6:55

I'm just going off on a tangent here, where,

Brad Miller 6:57

where people get treated differently by family

Brad Miller 7:01

or by others. That doesn't have to be, so that's good.

Brad Miller 7:05

Let's go down for what we've talked about a little

Brad Miller 7:08

bit here windy about your, you know, what happened

Brad Miller 7:10

to you physically, and how you kind of got through that.

Brad Miller 7:13

We've talked about your spiritual life, your

Brad Miller 7:16

relationship with God, that, to me, that's all so important.

Brad Miller 7:19

And we talked a bit about some of the habits

Brad Miller 7:20

and you know, I call it the cognitive kind of the

Brad Miller 7:23

application of your things into your life. But let's talk

Brad Miller 7:28

about what you're doing. Now. You know, while you're

Brad Miller 7:30

talking to me, and while you're trying, it seems like

Brad Miller 7:32

you've taken this experience that is, you know,

Brad Miller 7:36

by any measure is traumatic and dramatic.

Brad Miller 7:39

And a lot of people could handle it. And you've only

Brad Miller 7:41

handled it, but now you want to share it with others,

Brad Miller 7:43

you want to share your story with others, and

Brad Miller 7:46

you want to share how you can be helpful to other people.

Brad Miller 7:50

And I think it comes out with encouragement

Brad Miller 7:52

that you have experienced yourself, but also some

Brad Miller 7:57

leaning within you to want to share

Brad Miller 7:59

in love with other people. So tell us a little bit

Brad Miller 8:02

about that. Why are you doing what you're doing?

Brad Miller 8:04

Now tell us a bit about your coaching programs,

Brad Miller 8:06

or why you want to share your story with other

Brad Miller 8:08

people. A lot of people could just say no, thank you, but you do

Wendy Wallace 8:11

well, because when I started writing, I did went,

Wendy Wallace 8:18

I think it was pretty much the next day after

Wendy Wallace 8:20

that tubing adventure. I set up my website

Wendy Wallace 8:23

and I started to write about initially it was life

Wendy Wallace 8:27

as an amputee. But I didn't want to talk about

Wendy Wallace 8:29

that I wanted to talk about moving on and just

Wendy Wallace 8:32

putting those struggles coping with them and

Wendy Wallace 8:35

moving on. And what I found was a huge response

Wendy Wallace 8:41

from people who needed that encouragement

Wendy Wallace 8:44

that I couldn't get to, I mean, in my little circle

Wendy Wallace 8:48

here of influence. And so this is where I found

Wendy Wallace 8:55

why God allowed this to happen to me because

Wendy Wallace 8:59

he needed me to share with people that

Wendy Wallace 9:14

kind of losing my training my words here. It's like

Wendy Wallace 9:18

it's my purpose. It's my way of sharing the love

Wendy Wallace 9:22

of Jesus, with everybody, everybody that I can reach.

Wendy Wallace 9:30

And there's a scripture, Second Corinthians one

Wendy Wallace 9:34

four, which talks about God comforting us in our

Wendy Wallace 9:39

struggles in our tribulations so that we can

Wendy Wallace 9:43

comfort and encourage other people in theirs.

Wendy Wallace 9:46

So I've been through something where not

Wendy Wallace 9:49

everybody I talked to is an amputee. But

Wendy Wallace 9:52

everybody struggles, and we can relate to people

Wendy Wallace 9:56

better when we've been through something similar,

Wendy Wallace 9:59

right? So it's, I feel like it's my calling. This is what

he wants me to do. This is why he allowed this to

happen to me. So I can be an influence and

encourage her to help those people who might not

have somebody right there with them.

That's awesome. And you are doing that through

various means. You've mentioned writing and

tell us how you are doing that. You've

mentioned writing, but I know you have some

social media impact. How are you doing this?

How are you impacting people, not only in your

local community, but I think there's a need out

there. I'll give you one quick perspective. I think

Google every year puts out some of the things

the biggest search terms for the year in the

last year, I believe, the number one search term

in Google was how to how can I heal? Well,

that indicates there's a lot of hurt and pain out

there that people want to heal, and you're offering

some things that can be a healing thing. So how

are you getting the word out there? Tell us a little

bit about what you are doing then to share this encouragement?

I have a website called one exceptional life.

And this is where I focus on helping people rediscover

God's joy and peace amid the trials of their lives.

So I talk about overcoming struggles, spiritual

growth, growing, gratitude, joy, positivity,

all of these things because they're all little

components of the things that I needed when I needed

to move past my struggle. And so the blog is a big

part of that. And when I take that through

social media and I am now the one exceptional life,

lady, I don't know. I had somebody call me the

peace lady today because they talk a lot about

having peace and joy through your struggles in the

only way you can really have joy and peace is

with Jesus. He gives you that comfort. And so I can

spread that message through social media through

guesting on podcasts like this through the

writings on my blog, and even though coaching,

because people get stuck. It's part of what you

talk about getting unstuck, right? And sometimes, they just don't know how.

And so you have a lesson to teach them and

give them some of the how-tos. And so let's go

there for a second in terms of if people want

to go to you for coaching and learn more

about that. What are they going to find if they

if they signed up for you know if I sign up for

a coaching session with with with Wendy, what

kind of things are we going to talk about?

What is kind of the process that you're going

to work through? For our listener, maybe

we have a listener out there who's had some

devastating physical thing happened to them,

and they're struggling to get out of it. So

what kinds of things do we talk about in your coaching session?

We talk a lot about faith. Because oftentimes,

when hard things happen, our faith tends to waver.

You either grab on to God or you blame him.

And so we do talk a lot about faith and growing

your spiritual life and your prayer life and gratitude.

Kindness is another thing when you're when you're

feeling sorry for yourself one of the best things

you can do is go help somebody else. Because

it always lifts us up when we see somebody

else being encouraged by your help. So yeah,

it's just a combination of all of those things.

So give us an example in about you.

You've shared how you're coaching you're helping

other folks and part of your courage to help them to

help others with things of this nature, let's just be specific,

for a moment, maybe some sort of a testimonial,

tell us about a person or a situation that you've

paid talk to you that you've seen, okay. You've had that

feeling that vibe, where you say, okay,

something I've said or something we've done here is

a good thing. And we've seen some transformation

take place. Do you have a story like that?

Yeah, just the other day, I was working with a

young lady and simply, you know, because a

lot of times, we get a lot of negative self-talk

that's happening. And whether it's from someone else,

knocking us down, or you know, even what we say

to ourselves, that can be even more hurtful.

But when we look at the promises of God and

what He says, When you're one of his children,

you're adopted into His family You're redeemed,

you're blessed. You're there a list right now. But my point is

So you see this young lady, you saw some trends

yeah, just the recognition that, Oh, my goodness,

I am his child. So why should I let this person

over here telling me, I'm no good matter?

Wow. So and you saw that happen in her and

I think you've got a message of encouragement

to share with other folks here, Wendy.

And so if there are folks like this young lady who

are out there on our listening audience, or audiences,

a lot of folks who've gone through what are

all kinds of tribulations in life, some of which are

emotional, some are physical, and some

of them are relationship oriented. But if folks

want to learn more about you and get a hold of

you maybe see your blogs and other things

you've written or understandable about what

you're about to perhaps take advantage

of your coaching. How can they get connected?

My website is oneexceptional life.com It's the word one.

O N E and everything you need to reach me is there.

I also have a free PDF that is five steps to unlocking

peace when you're going through tough times.

And the link for that is oneexceptional life.com/free.

So it's easy to find it on the site as well.

And yeah, I welcome anyone who has questions

or just need some resources just to reach out.

Awesome. Awesome. And just one last question

for you somewhere in the materials about you.

It says you love ice cream. What's your favorite

ice cream? Tell me about that.

I have to one of them is moose tracks. But the

one that I'm allowed to have three a week because

it's an addiction. And so I have to limit myself

but their double Carmel Magnum ice cream

bars. You never had them up. There are only

three in a box. We know I am limited, but there are some.

Well, it's been awesome to have you with us

here today. Yeah. And we'll keep that in mind if we

ever need to, you know, tempt you with something

double Magnum ice cream bars, carbohydrate bars

are the way Absolutely, but some fascinating,

fascinating story to tell Wendy about how something

is dramatic, as you know, coming close to not

only losing your life, but you know, coming outside

of that experience without your hands and feet

and then learning how to live life. What an amazing

story you've got here, and you've got some great

things to share with others. And it's been a blessing

to have you here on the beyond adversity podcast

with Dr. Brad Miller. We'll put links to everything she's

about at Dr.bradmiller.com. And he's a person to get

to know because she's an encouraging person, a

great smile and a great countenance about her

and a great attitude of gratitude. We thank you,

Wendy Wallace, for being our guest today on

the beyond adversity podcast.