A friend shared with me the journey she is experiencing with her weight loss. She expressed her frustration that after working hard through one year she gained about half of it back the next year. Her frustration was clear and while trying to find meaning in her experience she realized that had she not experienced the work and weight loss she would be in a far more difficult situation than she now finds herself.
The message I took from this is the need to see what we have gained from our experiences and not what we have lost. For example, my friend gained endurance, strength and a knowledge that she is capable of loosing the weight. I've thought about this SO much over the past couple months. I realized that part of my problem lately is my inability to see beyond what I have lost and what is currently missing from my life to what I have gained.
One of the biggest things I have gained over the past few years is the understanding that I can do things I didn't think I could. Chanllanges come, emotions are strangling at times but I am still here.
I promised myself I'd take it easy in my first year of grief and not take on anything new (because it would be too difficult). In that first year I adopted an 80 lb dog and trained it (he's still a work in progress), ran an MLM for six months (learned a ton), taught a two-year old to speak and sing, wrote 8,000 words for a book project that stalled (who knows how that will end), traveled to visit family 1,600 miles round trip five times without a DVD player in my car, taught my second child piano lessons, was the treasurer for my littlest son's preschool group and taught monthly art classes to my son's third grade class. Way to "take it easy."
I spent quite a bit of time learning about the grieving process and even learned to take baths and started hanging out at the tennis club, taking up a sport I thought I had given up for good when I chose to be a mother. I've reconnected with old friends and made some new ones who I sometimes invite into my life during the really hard stuff, the incredible thing is we're still friends after they've been there with me. I've learned the power of forgiveness and inviting people into our lives even when they may hurt us.
The struggles, the challenges, the hard stuff can consume our lives. It is only when we choose to look for the good that we find ourselves feeling blessed. It's when we feel the good stuff more than the bad that we win the day.
"Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it." -Joseph Smith Jr.
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