At our annual gala, musician and performer David Osmond candidly discussed his battle with multiple sclerosis.
“When I was in the prime of my life, out of nowhere, I ended up going quickly into a wheelchair, and from the chest down, believe it or not, I couldn’t move a thing, to where I couldn’t move my toes, and my eyesight was diminished, and my voice was leaving, and they said, I’d never maybe sing again, let alone get on stage,” he said. “If you don’t believe in miracles, I pray you believe in one tonight because you’re absolutely looking at one.”
Osmond also shared one powerful question that he always asks himself, and then he performed “I Can Do This,” the song he wrote that was inspired by his struggle with MS.
“Maybe the strongest thing I learned when I sat in my wheelchair, I was in a chair at my parents’ place in Orem years ago. And I was dating my wife, and we knew we wanted to get married, and we knew we wanted a family. We wanted to have kids,” he said.
“I remember looking across the way at one of my other brothers, and he was wrestling on the floor with his son. He was about a year or two old. And I remember thinking to myself, ‘What a beautiful thing.’ I was smiling intrinsically at this father-son wrestling match, you know?,” he recalled. “And then something changed in my mind. And what I was looking at I felt was mocking me because I didn’t think I’d ever have that. And the burning question in that moment, I’ll never forget it, was, ‘Why? Why did this happen to me?’ And I felt so sorry for myself. And I felt so dark, and it was just, I was bitter.”
He concluded, “I’ve learned, for me, I’m not allowed to ever ask that question of ‘Why did this happen to me?’ ever again unless I ask the very same question for every moment of happiness and joy that comes into my life—both great and small.”
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