Do you ever stop and wonder if the people in your life come and go for a reason? What if every person is meant to be like medicine and come into our lives to heal some deep part of our psyche and our Soul?
I’m not talking about someone dying. I am talking about those who live but then don’t. There have been too many of those for me over the course of my fifty-one years. Last week I was thinking of how I would love to reach out to someone for advice but then sadly realized that person isn’t able to have a conversation anymore. Life broke them early on, and many traumatic events afterward put them into a place that had them totally lose their mind.
All of us get broken by life at some time or another. We can succumb to the brokenness or survive and thrive. Watching someone slowly slipping away and becoming someone you don’t know is terribly painful. I think of families whose loved ones develop dementia which has to be hell. Mental illness is another example, and it makes your hands feel tied. You don’t know exactly what to do.
I was driving to Greenville, SC, yesterday and thinking about the different people in my life who have come and gone as well as those who have stayed. I said a prayer of gratitude for all of the above. As I reflected, I thought of what I once deemed rock-solid relationships that are no more. It isn’t the fault of anyone. It is just a part of life. Each of us grows at our own pace. Without a doubt, I have been the reason for some of the endings. Some I regret, and some I know were for the best. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t still hard and painful sometimes.
All of us are works in progress and doing the very best that we can in each moment. Even though it might not seem like it, I believe our Souls are pushing us to rise to our fullest potential. Hopefully, we are listening and working and growing. If we refuse to grow and learn, we have to go back and repeat the lesson. Worst case scenario, we wind up with so much stress from the same old lesson that we can lose our minds.
My friend Richard once asked me if I had ever heard the saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That has a lot of validity, and I know because I’ve seen it firsthand. I wondered after my breakdown if that was happening to me. Was all of the stress I had endured finally taking its toll? Obviously, I could see the damage to my memory and my mental skills. I had seen it in others and worried it was happening to me. I set about a cleansing of sorts not looking to go back but to purge and move forward. I want to heal.
“There is no greater battle in life than the battle between the part of you that wants to be healed and the parts of you that are comfortable and content remaining broken.”– Iyanla Vanzant
So, with a desire to finally heal I recently sat perused through some of my old journals. They surely got my attention. It was clearly evident that I am still repeating some of the very same lessons that I was trying to learn back in 1988, 2005, 2007 and even before. The circumstances in some cases were almost identical. It was a little freaky, to say the least.
We are all creatures of habit that is for sure. I’m so grateful that I wrote it all down because it helped me to see the patterns that I’ve continued to repeat throughout my life. Just when I would start to break out of the old, I would fall back into the same old pattern, and before I knew it, I was sideways again.
Reading through my old experiences, I had an aha. Life and death as well as the world, strip away everything we think we know is real, for us to hopefully turn within and discover what is truly real. Everything in this life passes — everything. What is real is that we only have this moment in time. We may get a second, a third or one hundred and eleven chances but the time will come when we leave here.
I desperately want to get it right before I leave this world.
Every day I pray that I listen beyond what my ears hear to the voice that comes from a much deeper place than I can even describe. That voice tells me to love like there is no tomorrow, to forgive as if my life depends on it and to grow through life with the knowledge that I’m just a part of the Divine Plan and a part of a puzzle that is much bigger than me.
Lastly, it reminds to always keep in mind that I might be someone else’s healing…just as there are so many that have been healing ones for me.
Love and light!
Kim
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