Written By:  Tiffany Verzal @ Stand with Faith

A couple of weeks ago I posted the old Care Pages post about Alexis’ therapy, Brandon & I quitting our jobs, and picking up and moving from Texas. It’s really hard for me to believe it was five years ago, it truly seems like it was a different lifetime.

Looking back, I am not sure how I functioned through that June five short years ago. The only things I remember are that I was really tired, and that Alexis cried A LOT. So if there are any of you out there who feel like you are walking around in a fog, the good news is that at some point, the fog will lift. The other great part is that whatever difficult life event you are going through, you won’t remember a bulk of that either. It’s pretty amazing what people can do, if something forces their hand.

And that is literally where Brandon and I were at- our hand was being forced…there wasn’t a “safe” decision in sight. If we went back to College Station, Texas we had our jobs, our home, and our friends. Alexis didn’t have anywhere to do therapy, and it was pretty obvious that one of us would have to quit our job. If we stayed in Lincoln, Alexis could do therapy at Madonna, our families were here…but neither of us had a job (nor were there any in Lincoln for us). We were going to have to sell our house, and the economy was getting dicey. We needed a little push over the edge, and thank goodness, one of our therapists was willing to do that. So we took our chances, and ordered our first piece of equipment (a laptop) to start our company (which was actually delivered to the room we were living in at the hospital).

Neither Brandon nor I possess the “sales” gene. We don’t like to talk about ourselves or the things we have done. Looking back, both of us should have stopped right then and there, and figured out something else for our careers. But we didn’t, because we were desperate. Brandon made cold calls all day while I was at therapy with Alexis. He eventually struck a deal with the Omaha World Herald for us to produce a high school football “game of the week” on Friday nights. We would edit all night, and have it ready at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. It was pretty much our only income for months. Needless to say that after buying equipment, paying our mortgage in College Station, and paying for rent in Lincoln…our money was going away quickly.

I guess we probably should have stopped, and figured out something else for our careers (I think I have mentioned that before). But we didn’t, because just when it seemed like it wasn’t going to work out, we would get a phone call for us to do some work. Little by little, we made it work.

We’ve had wonderful friends who’ve helped us out along the way. An old college buddy managed our website for three years with only a quarter of what we should have paid him. We’ve had people pass along our name, and gained more clients as time goes on. We will forever be thankful for the people who believed in us enough to get us going, and keep us going.

Owning my own video production company had been a dream of mine since college. I wanted to share positive and uplifting stories, and that’s what both Brandon and I get to do now. We’ve done a documentary on traumatic brain injury rehabilitation (for Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital), we are lucky enough to share stories of people who recover every year at Madonna. We’ve helped the Food Bank of Lincoln win a car, enabled sick kids all over the country to enjoy some fun moments with Larry the Cable guy and animals from the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, and helped numerous non-profits raise money. It’s not lost on me, I am living my dream.

That’s good for me. My question is, are you living your dream? Is your heart telling you that you should be doing something else, but you are just not listening? What’s stopping you?

If you have answers to those questions, let me give you a little advice. Whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it. Sure, there are going to be obstacles, it’s going to be hard, there are a lot of people that will doubt you…but if you are passionate about it, if you need to do it, you will find a way.