By Dawn Onley

Have you ever noticed how loud kids are? It’s funny, even when they “whisper,” they are loud. They are bursting with energy and joy, excited to tell us whatever it is they want to tell us and despite our pleas, they just won’t allow this good news to be bottled up and sealed in a grown-up, decibel-approved tone.

Several times each day, my husband or I have to remind our little one to use his “indoor” voice. For a brief second he tries, but before long, he’s back to his normal loud tone.

Tim Storey thinks this is a good thing. The motivational speaker and life coach says children have a lot to shout about. Their world is awesome! So are their friends, and their toys, and their discoveries. They are excited about the places that we promise to take them, books, animals, action figures, you name it. They are joyful when they sit down to a favorite meal. They want us to know, sometimes all at once, about the great day they had.

Life is unfolding before their eyes and they are (loudly) capturing all of it.

We used to be the same way, Storey explains, until life knocked us down. Slowly but surely, after we faced heartache, disappointment and pain, we got rid of our shout. When we let go of our dreams to deal with the here and now, when we stopped believing in hope and miracles, we started to whisper. We lost our enthusiasm and energy.

“The Scriptures say that disappointment can make you heartsick. Well, that’s bad because the heart is the center. It’s your core,” Storey said on an Oprah Super Soul Sunday episode. “Joy comes from the heart. Peace. Faith. So when you’re disappointed and your heart is sick, it can take away your shout. So life can knock the shout out of you.”

It doesn’t have to be this way, however. There are ways to get the shout back, he said.

“When life tries to take me down to a whisper, I just shout on purpose. Just intentionally shout,” Storey said. “Sometimes I am driving on the freeway, and I’ll just think about things that are going right. So it’s not always a verbal shout. It’s an inward shout of choosing to say, ‘Hey, this is something to shout about. I’m still alive.’”

I’m so thankful for the reminder.

Today I’m shouting because I’m alive. I’m shouting because I have a renewed determination and focus to achieve my dreams. I’m shouting because I’ve been blessed with an incredibly loud toddler who helps me to hear and to see the everyday things that I take for granted.

I hope you’ll join me in shouting. We all have a lot for which to be thankful. I’ll bet we each can find something worth shouting about.

Let’s stop tolerating life and start living every moment of it. Actually, we have even more reason than our kids to shout. Think about it. We’ve been dealt some blows and we survived! It could have gone a different way. For many people who are no longer here to tell the story, it did.

Yet, we are still standing. Miraculously, by the grace of God. Even if we have to limp sometimes to get through life, we’re still here.

Glory! Go grab your cymbals, your tambourines and your bullhorns. I feel a shout coming on!