The last few months I have spent a great amount of time looking at my life. I have examined and prayed. I have cried out in joy and suffering. I have rejoiced and I have damned. However through it all I have held gratitude at my core.
It has taken me many a folly to truly understand that gratitude is the one true key to a life full of blessing.
Many years ago I came to realize that our callings, our purpose you might say are buried within our wounds. Those things in life that have caused us so much pain have also served to bring forth, if we allow ourselves to see and feel it, our greatest purpose. It is within these times of great mourning that we discover who we really are and how great the divine is. It is in these supposed weak moments in our lives where we feel perhaps like we have been cast into the shadows and are unwanted and undeserving that we can discover the greatest of love. It is here through the act of self- forgiveness and love that we meet our maker within ourselves.
When we practice the “F” word – FORGIVENESS, we open ourselves up to the miracle of love. Forgiveness is seated with gratitude, and in our ability to find gratitude for even the most evil of ills that our lives might be blessed with we discover our nature. We discover that which can either tear us apart or make us whole.
No two humans will ever suffer the same. We may walk in similar shoes of pain but we will never suffer the same. Therefore it is up to no one to cast judgement on another for how they choose to process through anything, whether it be the loss of a job, a relationship, a child, a rape or something else. But one thing is for certain, in these times of great depression and uncertainty we still have the ability to lean into love. Many of us choose, at least for a time frame to lean into victim-hood and hate. We choose to be conquered by these miseries and to cast an evilness out of ourselves to show our pain. Feeling that there is no love inside of us to attach to, that we had it coming or are not worthy of anything more than suffering we cower to the fear of the chaos that our lives have been thrown into and we lean into our egos. We swear off forgiveness, we turn away from love and we most certainly find no gratitude for the misery that we are sitting in.
This is a natural part of the process of recovering and healing. However shit happens to all of us. There is no one on this planet that will not suffer, and suffer greatly at some point in their existence here on earth. The one thing that we can control is how long we choose to sit in our pain and allow it to run our lives. The next thing that we have control over is how we choose to stand in it. We CAN make the conscious choice to find forgiveness and love or to remain caught in the grasp of hatred and suffering.
Our hatred may seem to make us strong, but it is a false strength. One that is only eating off of our own love and once it succeeds at killing our connection and joy it will parish like ash in a rain storm.
So why put your hope in something that does not serve you but only wishes to control you?
I write this article the day after Thanksgiving and my heart bears with it much pain from recent months and the years that have past. I grieve the loss of moments with my children, the loss of time with my mother who suffers from dementia, I grieve the loss of a love that opened me so wide and the loss of children I will never know. I feel the pain in my womb from a rape by a stranger of many years back and the fear that rolled through me when my lover became a monster and forced himself upon me. I feel the hatred toward my parents for ignoring my cries to be loved and seen, approved of and accepted. I feel the disappointment of loosing a house in foreclosure and having to rob my child’s piggy bank for change to buy milk. I feel the frustration and bitterness of looking a partner in the eye as they drank themselves into oblivion and said I was making it up. I feel the sorrow of having to put a beloved cat down. I feel the terror of breaking a heart that does not deserve to be broken. I feel the worry and fear of potentially loosing a child right in front of my eyes….
I feel all of this pain and more.
And yet I choose LOVE.
I choose GRATITUDE.
I choose FORGIVENESS.
I do not wake with thoughts of all of these things. No, instead I wake and before my feet hit the ground I call out a prayer to God from my heart center in gratitude for waking. I call out a prayer of gratitude for having slept and woke and have all my children do the same. I am thankful in the morning hours for the day that is set out before me filled with hope and opportunity. I set my feet on the floor with a knowing that it is up to me as to how my day goes. Things may test my faith, they may test my courage and love, but ultimately it is still my decision to make as to how my days goes.
Do you know what is said about desire?
It is said that those things that you desire, desire you as well.
The reason we have the desires that we have is because our desires are linked to our path, our purpose and they are waiting for us to reach them.
If we are to have the lives that we deserve and desire, then we must be willing to reach outside of our comfort zones of hatred and fear and lean into the territory of unconditional love, forgiveness and gratitude. We must do what is foreign to us and we must trust in the creator that our highest and greatest good is where we are headed. That anything that might feel as if it is an obstacle to this is actually just a guidance system that is moving us toward our truth. This truth is not that of the victim, it is that of the “blessed.”
We will be pushed by any and all means until we open to our soul vision. This vision is an alignment with our purpose. The divine vision that God has for each of our lives is right before us, yet we cannot see it and we fight it. We cover our eyes in fear to it. We hide in normalcy and we become complacent and numb to the callings of our spirit. The nudges that push on us to be more. Do more. Serve more. Radiate more.
Yet all we have to do is LET GO!
The glory of the creator is right there, waiting to wash us in blessings, love and all our desires if we would just LET GO.
We must let go of the belief that we need to control.
We must let go of the belief that surrender is weakness.
We must let go of our pain and suffering.
This is how we become the alchemist of our lives.
And the first step to letting go….
GRATITUDE.
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Make today a day of GRATITUDE and SURRENDER.
Make today GREAT.
Take the first step into the rest of your divine life.
-KW