Finding Happiness in the Darkest of Night
Both Good and Bad news have been coming lately -- unfortunately the latter is hanging around. We're at a stalemate, and I refuse to let the bad news consume my life.
Anyways, with that said - a lot has been on my mind. It's times like this when I find myself writing just to see the thoughts on paper. Guess that's a side of me I get from my mom (the English teacher).
Originally wrote this to my sister, when discussing how to handle stress and anxiety from a plethora of bad news... she seemed to like it, so I'm posting it because you never know what could end up helping someone else. If you keep everything inside, you'll never know.
A lot has been on my mind lately, the thickening presence of death and sickness has brought their ravenous appetites forward, their disease bearing paws have reached out and defaced many of the loving smiles I count on in my time of need.
Not everyone around seems to be equiped to handle the insurmountable stress and saddness that comes with such news.
There is never a 'good time' for affliction to hit.
As a natural disaster may come, sometimes without warning, leaving in its path devastation and disorientation, it is through these severe circumstances that the closest to the trauma will often be forced to reinvent themselves in order to overcome the associated disorientation.
If not, they often risk desolate isolation from their lives and those around them.
It is in this reinvention that we can find a happiness within the tragedy. It is in this reinvention, they find the strength to climb out of the ashes and bring new meaning to their life in memory of those hurt or lost along the way.
Devastation has the odd ability to bring people together.
We band together in an attempt to form a stronger collective - to take on the aftermath surrounding recent tragedy.
People rise up and become pieces of a construction team -- the main support beams that allow others to lean on them in their time of need, the facilitator who keeps order and creates a path forward.
Those who may have not spoken in years have the opportunity to recreate and strengthen their former bond.
Those who may have fallen aside and become consumed in other avenues of their lives may be brought back to realize true importance in maintaining the bonds and relationships within family and friends.
Death and sickness often have a strange way of bringing us together and forcing us to reevaluate how we have been living our lives.
We now see more clearly 'true' importance - the difference in allowing your day to be a bad day because your project missed a deadline and allowing that day to still be good because the Lord has blessed you with another twenty-four hours full of the people you love and care for.
It is important to mourn. It is important to grieve.
Strength is not pushing back these feelings -- "If we didn't feel sadness we could never experience happiness; if we didn't get angry on occasion we would never know peace, and if we didn't trust our hearts we'd never know love."
In these times of darkness, turn to those you love for support and search for your 'meaning'. Only you have the opportunity to take this morbid fiend and strip him of his power.
While we cannot change the past, and do not have the control to directly affect the conditions or actions of those around us - we do have the power to change how we react.
It is in this reaction that we take the saddness from the darkness and replace it with strength and meaning. Like a bone that has been fractured, once we heal we become stronger than before.
