In The Midst Of The Storm

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ~  Haruki Murakami

The situations in life that we benefit the most from are the one that push us out of our comfort zone. The ones that make us fall on our faces, broken but still breathing and trying our best to stay alive; the ones that make us stay up at night hoping praying to fall asleep and not wake up, yet make us hope for a better day with the sun rising. we have all been there, we have all at some point reached rock bottom. Falling apart and crumbling under life’s punches, knocked out but never knocked off, falling face first and yet, finding a way to get back up and keep going.

We have all been through that one big storm. The one that took away everything we relied on in life, and left us with nothing but the naked truth of what we are, of who we truly are. That storm that brings out everything we buried deep inside and prayed to never see, all those feelings we buried alive hoping that one day they will just go away. But you know what they say about feelings buried alive: they seep and then come back around as inappropriate behaviors... So when the storm finally hits, we try our best to go through it by putting one foot in front of the other, praying for God’s grace and strength everyday. We do so by trying as much as it depends on us to keep our heads high during the day no matter how hard it is and our knees on the ground during the night seeking God’s direction and reassurance because that storm is shaking and tearing everything apart in our life from the ground up, making everything fall apart in the most brutal and unexpected way.

However, if we take time to be silent in the midst of the storm; if we take time to truly be with ourselves and sit in the heart of the storm and sit in the heartbreak it brings along, if we reach that place where we can quiet our mind in order to ask ourselves the right questions, we might understand the purpose of the storm. We have a habit of seeing the evil in everything but only when we learn to look at life and its most unfortunate situations with a grateful heart, we can find the meaning into and the purpose behind every situation life throws at us, even the most violent storms. Sometimes it is to reveal another layer of ourselves we had no idea existed. Sometimes it is to remove everything so that we can have the opportunity to restart on a clean slate. And sometimes the things we believe are falling apart are actually falling into place and even when we think everything is crumbling, perhaps they truly are. Perhaps they have to crumble for us to build better foundations for our lives and for us to be able to put the pieces that are crumbling back together the way they were meant to be, the way we intended them to be or perhaps the way God intended them to be.

There isn’t necessarily something good about a stormy life but by training our mind to look for it we always end up finding something to be grateful for. And if after searching in your mind and your heart you can’t find anything, just remember that the good thing about hitting rock bottom in life is that there is only one direction you can go and it’s up. And this doesn’t give you hope, I don’t know what else will.

-Excerpt from a memoir I will never Write #4

The Reality Of Love

"People will do anything to have you until they realize they cannot handle the reality of you"

Most of the time we walk into relationships with that idea of perfection about the person we are about to enter that adventure with. We walk in with that idealization of the relationship looking at it through rose tinted glasses. But this is not what love is. Love is not all figured out. Love can be messy and complicated sometimes. But it all comes down to taking a pledge to work it out and stick together through thick and thin.

Love is understanding that sometimes we fight but it doesn’t mean the love is gone. Because the truth is the minute one party doesn’t bother enough to engage in the resolution of a conflict, it means that there is nothing worth fighting for anymore. To love means stop hiding behind excuses and own up your mistakes, apologize when you mess up and make an efforts to make things better. Love is stop judging each other for failing to be who we want each other to be, for what we want the relationship to be and embrace the reality of the now whether it is the relationship or the people we are at each stage of the relationship.

Love is being there for each other, deciding to grow together but still having enough space to be able to nurture our dreams, passions and go after them. It is encouraging each other and bring out the best. It is also making concessions sometimes. It is putting the other person first sometimes because when you love, you have the other person’s interests at heart. Love is being accountable for the other person’s heart while still understanding that you are not responsible for their emotions and their feelings.

Love is everything but easy. It is multifaceted and there is no contradiction. It is just what it is and you just have to embrace it as it is, even though it never makes sense. It never has and never will because it not meant to make sense and because the matters of the heart never make sense. Love can be a mess. And I would go as far as to quote Rainbow Rowell and say that “Love is like art, it is not supposed to look nice and beautiful, it is supposed to make you feel something.”

Love is beautiful and yet, it can be messy and complicated sometimes. There is no contradiction : it is just multifaceted.

-Excerpt from a memoir I will never write #2

Beauty From Tragedy

 “If somebody digs a whole in you, plant nice flowers and tell that person to go fuck themselves”

Unknown

I certainly did find it funny the first time I discovered this say mainly because it is the kind of thing I would say. However, past the hilarious laugh, I never really took time to reflect on it and find actual meaning in it. And then one day, while I was running up and down the stairs at work trying to get things done, in a moment of pure serenity and calm it finally hit me.

Planting the flowers is replacing the ugliness of the void with something beautiful to you. Something you care about, something that bring beauty, peace and calm where there used to be a gigantic void. I find it amusing to complete it with “then send a nice bouquet to put on their grave” Sounds mean… but most of the time some people dig holes in you in hope to see you crumble. But then you find a good use to it and whatever beauty that stems from it will surely make them miserable to death. So you share that little bit of beauty with them (let your bright life and new found purpose light their dim life). So that even in death (metaphorically: when they are enraged about not having met their objectives) they can still remember that you found a purpose in the pain they tried to inflict you.

Not only the flowers represent repurposing an unfortunate situation into something more meaningful for you, it also serves as a monument. A place that you revisit to remind yourself of how strong you are, what a long way you have come. It is a place where you go to meditate on how what you once thought ruin, chaos and destruction, was another chance at making things better; another chance at letting go of things that did not belong in your life to make place for the things and the people that are meant to be in your life and in your heart.

And then one day when you meet someone sitting in the middle of their ruins too, trying to figure out life, wondering how they are going to fill the void and move on,. And you invite them to visit your garden. And you tell them about you, about your story, about your garden which stands right where your ruins and hole used to. You tell them about how you turned the brokenness into something beautiful and show them this garden, those flowers, those beautiful things you have invited into your life when letting go hurt but was the only option, as a undeniable proof that they can make it through too.

A proof that beauty can stem from pain and brokenness, a proof that blessing can sometime arise from tragedies.

-Excerpt from a memoir I will never write #1

Let Go And Let Yourself Be

2016 is gone and no matter how hard some days were, I am grateful for all that year brought to me, good and bad. As we are embracing a much needed fresh start, my invitation through today's article is for us to realize that it is vital to let go of the things that weighed on us, things that chained us to our past and prevented us to move forward if we want to move forward. Before we can build new bridges, it is  vital to burn the ones who are not worth crossing anymore, before we can welcome greater things and new people, we need to make some room and perhaps let go of the people who bring out the worst in ourselves and don't walk in the direction we aspire to walk in. And the reason for that is simple: People enter our lives for different reasons and at different seasons. like I mentioned in one my articles in "The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series some enter our lives to stay and some of them come to stir something in us. They slap us wide awake, crack us open not to make us bleed to death but to take us out of our darkness and force the light in.

And those people are generally not there to stay. They are a brief passing moment of our life that turns our whole world upside down (hopefully for the best) and help us realize that we are much more than what we thought we were. And when it is time for them to live, there is a need to accept that not everything is meant to last forever and that sometimes we have to let things go. We have to let things go because there are times where holding on hurts more than letting go and the storm they momentarily brought in your life to challenge us to grow, start over the story of our life and write it the way we wanted to, will turn into a perpetual chaos we might never recover from.

Separation is never easy. Even from the people who hurt us. It is never easy because we still foster the hope that things can change. That those people can change and make it up to us. It is hard because even though we are still broken there is still that part of us that love them and desires for things to be different. And sometimes they are. But most of the time things are just what they are and as sad as it is, that is how life goes sometimes.

Letting go will never be as easy as waking up the next day and being over it. Letting go is a process and processes take time. Processes don’t always yield the expected results on the first trial. Processes demand an understanding of the real problem, an evaluation of how to solve it and a commitment to put in work and dedication to make it to the end no matter how difficult it is. Letting go is not denying that we are missing the people we don’t share our life with anymore, whether they walked away or we cut them off or the things we give up on for a better tomorrow. It is embracing it and feeling entitled to miss those things because they took with them pieces of our existence when they left and/or use to define us. It is coming to term with the fact that even though we miss them, they are not what they were to us before and things are not and will never be the same anymore. It is understanding that no matter how great you are and how much you love those people, you will never be enough for them to stay and fight for you. And if they do not want to stay or change or make things work, there is nothing you can do about it.

Letting go is most importantly being aware of the fact that you cannot keep on giving pieces of yourself away to make people whole while you remain broken. It is accepting that even though you miss those people or those things, going back to what broke you is neither an option nor a good idea. So for this new year, I want you to forgive yourself for letting yourself down. I want you to be there for yourself and take care of yourself. get comfortable spending time with yourself and be gentle with yourself because you are doing the best you can. Prioritize your happiness and well being above all and understand that there is nothing wrong about it. Focus on yourself. Work on yourself, for yourself, by yourself and do you because you deserve it. 

I am ending this post with an Irish blessing that I love a lot and which translates better my wishes for you for this new year that will unfold itself before our eyes, hoping everything good you hope and pray for come your way in 2017.

"May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!"

Happy new year 2017

xo