If you’ve read some of the posts on this blog, I may seem like a very optimistic person with my many references to embracing your everyday moments — I even have the audacity to say that everyday moments can be extraordinary, which is quite the strong descriptor. However, despite what it may seem to you, I am not that optimistic – some may even say I’m more like an Eeyore versus a Pollyanna, or glass half empty versus glass half full. I struggle often to see the good in circumstances, people, life events, and the daily tasks. Some days I’m more successful than others – some days I struggle all day to find just a glimpse of good.
Life is messy, hard, sad, disappointing, tragic, unexplainable in its unrelenting emotional turmoil sometimes, and I want to validate that in this post. Searching for the good, the joy in life is a choice — sometimes a choice that life’s circumstances deem impossible at the present moment. I’ve felt the darkness of the exhaustion that is daily life with its twists and turns, its high, lows, it’s monotonous patterns and unexpected valleys. Somedays, it just feels like it will never get better, that life will never be extraordinary, much less even good again.
I’ve felt it – the overwhelming inky blackness, defeat, turmoil, hurt.
In four years as a nurse, I’ve walked right beside it, held its hand, cried hard tears, felt the darkness all around.
In my twenty odd years of life, I’ve seen it up close and palpable – as a wife, friend, sister, daughter, co-worker, relative — pain sometimes seems to swallow us up whether it be our personal pain or that of someone we love.
Because, you see, I believe it will. It may take time – weeks, months, years – and trouble may come back again, like a droopy rain cloud, hovering; but whatever your valley, your specific struggle, your personal pain is — it does not define you, it does not make you who you are.
You are worthy.
You are significant.
And someday, the pain will ease, at least for a moment, and you’ll begin again to believe that one day, the sun may shine once more, and you may be able to find good in some area of your life.
Until then, I wait with you. There’s no timeline to grief, to pain, to survival. It’s individual. Just like you are. I pray and hope someday that you can find an everyday moment that doesn’t quite feel extraordinary yet, but that feels good. That you can begin to celebrate life, living, the ability to have another breath, another day…and when that day comes – I hope you share it with someone — let someone else know that life is worth living even when it means walking through the fire, the valley, the darkness.
A familiar quote says that you never know a man’s life unless you walk a mile in his shoes. I think truer words have never been spoken. We all have stories to tell, hurts to process, joys to share — and that is the heart behind this space. Not a Pollyanna place to “put on a face”, but an honest, safe spot to share special moments, to celebrate with those on the mountain, and to encourage those beginning the climb, but, really, to walk alongside those in the midst of the journey. Because isn’t that all of us?
So we walk together, remembering that everyone’s everyday is completely different — yet with a similar refrain: we are all striving for a life well lived, even with its ever-changing shades of darkness and light.
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