Almost two years ago, I got an unwanted phone call. On the other end was Dr. Lisa Bellin, the breast specialist at St. Thomas West hospital here in Nashville, TN. She gave me the grim news that the biopsy she performed two days earlier was in fact, cancer.

Talk about an absolute loss of power. It was one of those crystallizing moments in time that mark the boundary between life as I’d known it and a life that was unknown...and scary as hell.

Because if it’s not a breast cancer diagnosis, it’s a pandemic, a tornado, systemic racism, the stock market, or the bleak mid-winter of loneliness. Now more than ever, we face an unfolding uncertainty. We must learn how to respond rather than react. There’s a difference.

I suppose we could decide on any given day that life is just too hard, and not worth the time and effort to make sense of any of it. We could give up. I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. And yet I go to work every day and meet with courageous souls who long to show up for themselves and their loved ones despite the chaos spinning around them.

They are in pain, yet they don’t want to suffer. Again, another difference.

We will inevitably experience pain in life. Some more than others. Pain is undemocratic. It’s part of life. Suffering, on the other hand, is the story of defeat we believe about our pain. This is optional.

If you want to read a book and be transformed by a story of overcoming in the face of dire circumstances and pain, read Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s the original playbook on reclaiming personal power. He survived the Holocaust and harnessed that pain to pioneer a life-giving approach to psychology called Logotherapy. It’s not about avoiding pain. It’s about finding meaning in the midst of the pain.

This is what I’m reminded of today: our personal power is not contingent on our circumstances. Our personal power is contingent on the wink of a moment that separates our circumstance from our response. Our personal power lies in the ability to slow down that moment and stretch it out. The space we create in that moment is everything. It gives way to the story we will live out of moving forward.

Your power is in your choice.

Oh, if we could bottle up this beauty and drink just a tablespoon every morning as a part of our personal narratives.

But wait...we can.

How will you wield it today?