Finding The Light Within

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

I have not talked about it much on this blog but several years ago I went through a serious depression.  It was the kind that shatters your entire life and leaves you pretty much starting from scratch.  

Hopefully this post will leave you with a quick feeling of happiness for what is possible.  Essentially, I lost my ability to function for a while and had a really hard time doing even common, everyday activities.  But slowly, since coming out the other side of a very dark tunnel, I have been building up my life again, in one small way after another.  

This time however I am building character more than anything to have a rock solid foundation rather than building say a career or a lifestyle.  Do not get me wrong, as time goes on and I get better and better in my life I still want things like a career and a lifestyle in a certain way.  But at the center of it all is this idea that I have the opportunity to grow as a person.  

That may well be a privilege as we do not all always function fully mentally.  If we are provided that privilege I think it is so, so important that we do an adequate amount of self-care along the way to really nurture that gift of the mind and its awesome powers.  Essentially, we just cannot, should not take it for granted. 

Granted in most people’s everyday lives, thoughts about the awesome powers of the mind are probably not on the top of the list.  People everywhere have a lot to do, a lot to take care of to keep the ship of life afloat.  That’s why I am finding that I like more and more to be a small, humble yet powerful voice in my own way that makes it a point to remind people to cherish that ability to function and carry out a potential flow in life that is all too easily taken for granted.  

If you can read this blog post you are doing really quite good I would say and I want to tell you thank you for reading it.  Writing it has helped me infinitely as does reading it hopefully does for you.  I have a lot to write about this journey that I have been on.  I have definitely learned to be more and more grateful for what I have.  At the same time, and more recently, I am seeing how I have been given the keys so to speak to open doors to my life and drive in a way that feels like it is for the first time.  In truth, it is not.  I had this before but though I did care a lot about life, something beyond me intervened.  

My strength has come from learning to learn from that departure from what I thought my life was going to be like to appreciate what my life actually is.  The more that we can do that.  The more that we can tap into the precious present as it has been called I think everything can blossom from there.  It is a present we find within, that flowers without.

Happiness is healing.  Our wounds may not go away but we can learn to relate to them differently.  Depression was in a way my salvation.  What in your life has challenged you to redefine your priorities?  What in your past was a divergence that though it seemed to send you astray may be looked upon as a pivot of opportunity for growth?  How can we make peace? Not simply observe peace but make it?  Maybe it starts with getting out of the way of our own light, a light that is bigger than any one of us.  Letting go and letting God can go a long way.  What is hurting you?