Perhaps you remember a time when someone said something about you that made you feel hopeless but has never left your mind. It is funny (and yet not funny) how a few spoken words can stick, and direct many of your future choices.

Last week I used a wheelchair to get through an airport on our way to Paris. The special assistance staff were excellent but sadly one of them said three words that have weighed me down ever since: ‘elle marche pas’. She doesn’t walk. That statement was true at the time, but I cannot accept it as a forever truth.

I suppose there are two reactions to absolute statements. We can either let them discourage us or we can try to prove them wrong. I am attempting to drive out those words by going out on the trike and trying to get an appointment with a physiotherapist. The determination to prove people wrong is a great motivator.

Are there any words that were spoken to you that you are struggling to move past? Don’t let them become an indisputable truth for you. You and you alone have the power to change the statements weighing you down. They are not absolutes.

Sometimes it is difficult, even impossible, to step out of the things people have decided you are. Sometimes, sadly, they are true. But how you live with them is key. Whatever the decree, you can be weighed down by it, or you can dance within it.

So remember how those spoken words made you feel every time you talk about someone else. Especially children. A statement can change the course of their life, for better or worse. Think carefully before you speak today. Maybe something you say will lift the hearer and make them believe in themselves again.

Here are my words for you: you are capable, you are strong and God loves you more than you can ever comprehend.