This is a blog that I have long wanted to write but wasn’t really sure how. When the worst things you can imagine actually happen in your life there is a gift that comes from the experience. It may not even be recognizable until you are well past the survival stages of grief. I don’t think it comes to those who get stuck in the anger and bitterness phase. It comes slowly side by side with the gentle healing of a broken heart. It seems to accompany the acceptance stage of grief. It is a gift given to survivors of all sorts of trauma. It is simply put…a gift of peace.
I will try to explain a little better. You know the expression- “Don’t sweat the small stuff”? After surviving a major trauma everything is small stuff. The daily frustrations of living disappear. You see clearly how trite they are. You have lived through something that required you to take not just one day at a time but one minute. Time changes for you. Each day races by but each minute drags on forever. You are so sure that you can never survive this……..and then you do.
After such a soul shaping experience you look around and realize how silly your fears are, how petty your worries have become and how precious each moment truly is. This gift does not go away as long as we hang on to it. Life has become very dear and time is something to treasure not waste.
Robert Fulghum wrote of a conversation he had while still a very young man with a Holocaust survivor. The older man was trying to teach him the same thing. Fulghum writes that he didn’t really get it until he was much older. He said that he had finally learned that “a lump in your oatmeal, a lump in your throat or a lump in your breast were totally different things and that only the last one was worth spending energy on.”
My worst’s have happened. I don’t doubt for a moment that more will come but I know that it is possible to survive them. I also know that in the meantime all the rest is small stuff. It is something that I have often wished I could give to someone else. I see and hear people every day caught up in the meaningless things of the world. I wish I could put the peace I feel into their hearts. Sometimes I just wish I could shake them, slap their face and say, “Snap out of it!” And that’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?
I will try to explain a little better. You know the expression- “Don’t sweat the small stuff”? After surviving a major trauma everything is small stuff. The daily frustrations of living disappear. You see clearly how trite they are. You have lived through something that required you to take not just one day at a time but one minute. Time changes for you. Each day races by but each minute drags on forever. You are so sure that you can never survive this……..and then you do.
After such a soul shaping experience you look around and realize how silly your fears are, how petty your worries have become and how precious each moment truly is. This gift does not go away as long as we hang on to it. Life has become very dear and time is something to treasure not waste.
Robert Fulghum wrote of a conversation he had while still a very young man with a Holocaust survivor. The older man was trying to teach him the same thing. Fulghum writes that he didn’t really get it until he was much older. He said that he had finally learned that “a lump in your oatmeal, a lump in your throat or a lump in your breast were totally different things and that only the last one was worth spending energy on.”
My worst’s have happened. I don’t doubt for a moment that more will come but I know that it is possible to survive them. I also know that in the meantime all the rest is small stuff. It is something that I have often wished I could give to someone else. I see and hear people every day caught up in the meaningless things of the world. I wish I could put the peace I feel into their hearts. Sometimes I just wish I could shake them, slap their face and say, “Snap out of it!” And that’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?
No comments:
Post a Comment