Trails and Happiness

Recently a fellow blogger has had a real rough time.....how I love her precious thoughts as she triumphs over her circumstances or triumphs despite her circumstances! Here are some of her thoughts I would like to share with you, I have her permission to use this but have taken out the private information.




On Pruning:

Our story this year - .... - has been been one of continually thinking things can't possibly get any worse...and then watching them do just that.

Isn't it amazing just how much you *can* take ......? Even very, very ordinary women like me. And isn't it amazing how adversity *grows you up*?! I am not the same person I was a year ago. And I am truly thankful for that stretching. I feel a bit like an unruly vine that is getting a whole lot of pruning and tying. Wow, it hurts!! But I hope to be beautiful in the end.

I bought a new charm for my bracelet the other day...a little silver rocking chair. For me it symbolised myself in old age. Don't laugh but one day I hope to be a sweet, white-haired old woman, pearls of kind wisdom spilling from my lips. I want to be bright-eyed, light hearted and free from bitterness. I want people to be surprised if they hear the troubles we walked through because I seem just so....joyful.

I am determined to allow this trying time to grow me and not break me. To make something beautiful out of what looks like a terrible mess. For me *and* my family. The stuff that is happening is just stuff. It doesn't have to seep inside and poison me - or my kids. We can make choices about how we respond and who we become no matter how dreadful things become.

'But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.....'

2 Corinthians 4: 7-9




On Crying:

I think I have learned something really big .... the difference between tears or sorrow or rage - tears that I are good and healthy and needful to shed - and tears of self pity.

It seems to me that sorrowful tears ebb and flow. They wash over me and, yeah, leave me feeling a bit weak and washed out...but a little bit better too.

Self pity is different. Those tears feel more like a whirlpool. It's quite a nice feeling wallowing in them for a bit but I suspect that if I didn't speak sternly to myself and drag myself out, I could find myself sucked into a pit from which I could not escape.

I wonder if some of the bitter old women you meet were faced with terrible adversity and chose to hang around with self pity just a little too long. It terrifies me to think that if I didn't choose a different path, I might wake up one morning and no longer be able to choose to find a way out.

I believe I am making choices today that are forming the old woman I will be. I choose joy.



Happiness Parcels:

I've adopted a policy of squeezing joy out of every moment that I can. I smile at sunsets, smell jonquils, laugh uproariously at silly puns, stroke kittens, snuggle my simply gorgeous 4 year old, eat chocolate, read email jokes, sing, dance around the kitchen...anything that feeds my soul even a tiny bit. And when I feel too pressed down to pull myself out of a pit I'm in, I call a friend and, depending on my day, have a cry, a vent or just chat about *anything* but...

I've given up hoping for a whole morning out by myself...never mind a much needed holiday ALONE somewhere FAR AWAY. (I admit I quite like the idea someone suggested of getting the 'Coma Fairy' to put the whole family out for a week or so though.)

For the moment, those longer respites are an impossible dream. I've realised that for now I need to grab the little happiness parcels as they come. They are a gift I dare not refuse.