Hello, my friends and welcome to the Live Inspired podcast, Monday morning moments with John O'Leary.

These are recorded each week so that you and I can begin

these days and these weeks in awe and on fire with a burst of inspiration. This episode's

going to be focused on this idea that life's most beautiful moments are often wrapped in imperfections.

Let's talk about that. We all wonder if we are enough. I think we

all worry about the opinions of others. But reading the book recently reminded me that the most

beautiful things in life are often born from the imperfect. Let me tell you more. The book was one

I originally read two decades ago. And when I read it 20 years ago, it fundamentally changed my life. The book is called Overwhelming Odds. It is the unauthorized biography of John O'Leary. It was written by two people who knew me better than anybody else, my parents.

It details their experience of having a child burned. It details them trying to keep their family

together. It talks about them witnessing the community showing up in mighty ways. And they write about

them experiencing the transformative power of grace

in action. Though I've read this book many times while reading it again recently, I was caught

off guard by how often I had to close that darn book and wipe my eyes. In one particularly moving

section, Mom writes about how the experiences changed,

not only how she felt about the idea of perfection, but redefined it so that she could clearly

see it more beautifully in others. I'm going to quote from the book right now. Here's what my

mother wrote. It was somewhere during those debreedments, grafting,

and release surgeries, somewhere between sitting at John's bedside, walking the halls at night,

praying for healing and begging God for a second chance at life, that I came to redefine in my

heart what it even meant to be beautiful or normal or desirable.

Because I came to realize that the world would no longer see my John as fitting these categories

as he did before. And I could not share in the world's biased judgment of my little boy. That realization

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