The saying goes, "when it rains, it pours." At this point in my life, I do believe I could become the poster child for this slogan. All this talk of things happening in 3's, or hitting rock bottom in order to learn your lesson and pick yourself back up, have proved to be completely useless in my situation. The drama in my life has come more in sets of 10's or 20's, rather than 3's, and I swear, if I get any lower, I will be 6 feet under. So, for the sake of this posting and me being able to make sense of life in the recent months, I am going to throw all those superstitious sayings out the window and go with my gut instinct.I genuinely believe I have a lot of lessons to learn in life. I think we all do, old or young, have many lessons to learn in life. I have said it in earlier posts and will say it again...life is constantly changing, and unless we are changing and adapting to the whirlwind, we will be left helpless, in a holding pattern, unable to move on and live a fulfilling life.
I recently heard a talk about tragedies faced in life and problems we all encounter at one point or another. But there was one line that particularly stood out for me. It was something along the lines of, "Pain and suffering are required in life...but misery is optional." WOW!!! This one hit me pretty hard!
Really, truly, think about that. MISERY IS OPTIONAL!!! If this is true, and I genuinely believe it is, then not ONE soul has the cop-out excuse of saying how miserable life is. NO...life is not miserable. But the way you are reacting to life is making you miserable. Absolutely, there are extremely severe situations that call for a time of mourning, a time of processing and fully moving past them and letting go of the anger or resentment caused by that situation. But TOO many people in this world literally GIVE UP THEIR POWER to the person or entity that has offended them or done them wrong in some way and continue to live in misery for months on end. WHY?!? Why, when there are so many outlets and resources in the world to help us all process difficult situations, would we choose to hold on to pain and resentment and anger? Why would we build our walls so high that not even the closest friend of family member can break through and help you find the light again.
I believe it is primarily due to fear. Fear of change. Fear of being pushed out of comfort zones. Personally, I say to hell with comfort zones! What is there to be learned when we are constantly in our comfort zone? We MUST branch out in this life and try new things, make new friends and learn new lessons. Things will not always turn out as we had intended or hoped they would, but guess what? They turned out EXACTLY as God would have had them turn out, and in the end, that's ALL that matters.
As I have gone through some extremely hellish experiences the past 6 months, I have also met this new group of friends that have turned out to be the greatest support network I EVER could have asked for! I kept questioning why so many things seem to be happening to me. But EVERYtime something major happened, I got a little closer to one of those people, and was able to establish new, genuine friendships in my life. I always knew I was NEVER alone in any one situation. So, although we walk through the darkness or feel the storm clouds constantly looming, if we are willing to keep working through it, we WILL find that there is always an amazing blessing in the end. I just pray I am never dense enough to overlook that blessing or lose the lesson at hand.
There is a purpose for every heartbreak. There is a purpose for every painful situation. Sometimes it's a matter of humbling us, sometimes a matter of reminding ourselves what is truly most important in life, and sometimes it is HUGE where we need to seriously re-vamp a certain aspect of our life. Either way, big or small, I will choose NOT to be miserable while in the situation. I will allow myself to experience the pain and suffering, but will not allow it to paralyze me to the point of helplessness or automatically becoming the "victim" in every situation. I am NOT a victim. I have choices. And no matter how many times I have to remind myself, or my supportive friends offer friendly words of advice, I will NEVER give up on avoiding misery. CHOOSE NOT TO LIVE IN MISERY!!!
