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“Life is the school. Love is the lesson.” Stuck in traffic, I read those words on the bumper of the car in front of me. What an incredibly simple, yet powerful message.

I recently attended a gymnastics competition where several young girls posed on stage to receive a team award. Each girl was meant to help hold the team trophy, as they posed for a group photo. The trophy was pulled away from one of the youngest girls as she attempted to take part. She struggled to be seen in the photo and to be a part of things, but one of the older girls pushed her aside. When the photos had been taken, and the gymnasts left the stage, the young gymnast brushed tears from her cheeks as she went to sit down. How unnecessary that was, in my opinion. There was plenty of room for the entire team on the platform. There was enough victory for everyone. The joy of winning could have easily been shared by all the girls. I wished the situation had been different for her.

i believe in blinking cursors on a white screen

giving letters to a world I've never met

i believe in sex as an act

and love as a process

in people to be selfish and

institutions to be worthless

-though their teachings are necessary

poems, in minds or on paper, should not be justified

and eaten away by negative space

i believe these things to be true:

all men are created equal

all women are bewitched from thin air

that the Hell in our lives is not Heaven on Earth. (someone had to prove there is no glory here or there).

my interests

compound daily

graduate each semester

and

dance unpredictably in the wind. i am in love.

so i lack disbelief

Reflections

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This I believe, in life and in choice. Sigh. I wish it was possible to be pro choice and anti abortion. I’ve had two, regret both and, despite my sadness over poor choices of my past (both engaging in behavior that caused pregnancies I didn’t feel I could keep and taking those lives), I still maintain a woman has the ultimate right to decide what her life and body can/will sustain.

I also believe life begins at conception, so I have known the shame of having broken another of the 10 Commandments. I am thankful every single day for grace and my belief in a transforming, forgiving God.

Abortion is a topic that few can broach with peaceful clarity and one that inspires deep grief within my own soul. It is more than a provocative political topic – it is a tragic reality for many women who felt there was no better choice. But in the end, it was exactly that – a choice and one that only I could ultimately make.

Oh, I wanted the phone to ring and for that white knight to bound in on his rescuing steed. I wanted him to want what I wanted. I wanted my child to live. But I also wanted its future to be one that would be full of joy and completion and solidarity. It didn’t seem to me that I could offer those things alone.

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As long ago as I can remember, my most common retort to life’s cruel injustices was shouting a fervent, “That’s not fair!” And, much to my dismay, outing that pink elephant yielded nothing more than a lackadaisical, “Not all things in life are fair.”

Such a passive response to unfair, inequitable situations left me nothing short of irritated each time I heard it. It made me feel helpless, as if I was standing up to a brick wall. The truth was obvious, yet all the reason and logic in the world couldn’t change things. I imagined injustice to be a green horned monster that somehow managed to escape responsibility for its actions every time.

Even at a young age, my quest to make the world a fair place was not limited to the playground. I was equally concerned with the starving children in Africa as I was for a friend who cried when someone called them names after school. I spent much of my life fighting every single unfair situation or statement that came my way … no matter how big or how small.

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I believe in believing in people’s dreams. When we were in high school, my friend Michele told me that she wanted to be a nurse. I laughed and said she shouldn’t bother. She was too timid, queasy at the sight of horror movie blood, let alone the body fluid splattering of hospital nursing. Ignoring my lack of confidence, Michele applied to nursing school and proved me wrong. As a student, one of Michele’s first health care experiences was working as a home health aide assisting geriatrics. She gave an enema to an old woman who hadn’t had a bowel movement in a month. “Gross,” I said, but Michele focused on how happy she was to have given much-needed relief and care to this neglected woman. After graduation, Michele worked in labor and delivery, next cardiology, and now pediatrics. In the past few years, my friend’s nursing skills have become personal. As my mother’s health has faltered, Michele has been there for us.

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Her sweet saying “love begins at home” is more than four words. Her wisdom inspired me to believe I have the power to save the world by putting these words into action.

For me, I desperately wanted love to begin at home. My parents’ horrible fights were devastating. I remember my father waking all five of us kids in the middle of the night to write thank you notes my mother forgot to send. Scared and not able to spell well, I thought if I could get it right, my mom and dad would be happy again.

I prayed the same prayer each night that God would somehow make our family whole. In the era of the Brady Bunch, I wanted a happy ending, a family like the one on TV. I didn’t want violence that left my mom in the hospital in a drug-induced stupor and my dad vacating.

But their brokenness was not fixable. Through a child’s eyes, all I wanted was the security of knowing that two people still loved me despite the fact they couldn’t love each other. I never found it. In that brokenness, I came to find the only truly perfect love – in God. With all my parent’s imperfections, in a backhand way they gave me the greatest life lesson. The world will always disappoint, but God’s love never will.

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Gardening is not my thing, but I do believe forgiveness is the fertile soil from which authentic freedom blossoms. In giving and receiving forgiveness I have been transformed spiritually, emotionally and physically. It has given me the latitude to love and grow in ways that remained locked up in my spirit until I sampled the fruit of the hard work of forgiving for myself. The work is hard, but the prize is so much sweeter than a day’s wages spent before its shadow can grace an open palm.

Finger-pointing, gossiping, back-biting, embellishing, dredging up history so old I was the only one who remembered: this was my retort to the hurt I felt when someone who should have loved me didn’t. The unspeakable names, the complete disregard for my parenting prerogative, the attack on my very being…and on and on continues the list of crimes perpetrated over several years. Perhaps you’ve been figuratively kicked to the curb yourself.

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I believe in no make-up days, sweat pants and t-shirt days. These are day that I like to call “Easy Sundays.”

Sundays are bitter sweet days for me. It marks the end of the weekend and the beginning of a new week. Since I’m in college, it means that it’s time to go back to the dorm and leave my family for the week.

I like to make these days “Easy Sundays.” I enjoy lying around all day, rocking in the rocking chairs on the porch with my shih tzu, and drinking sweet tea out of mason jars. This always makes it a little easier for my family and myself to say goodbye for the upcoming week.

Easy Sundays require no make-up. However, Easy Sundays DO require a nice pair of sweat pants and your favorite old t-shirt.

Easy Sundays are about enjoying the simple things in life. And I believe in Easy Sundays.

Reflections

This essay was very easy for me to write. It honestly came straight from the heart. It’s a Monday and I’m missing my family and thinking about those “Easy Sundays.”

~Christa Harvey

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I believe in many things. I believe in God and Jesus and rely on them daily. I believe in the quiet time that allows me to slow down, breath, remember my past and re-group. I believe in the innocence and blessings of children and the elderly in nursing homes. What I also believe in and am writing about today is the power and blessings of having a wonderful mom.

My mom had a hard life. As a teenager, she had an alcoholic father who eventually drank himself to death, but not before humiliating her by showing up at school looking for money for his habit. Her mother was very sickly so she was raised by her aunt (my namesake). Once my mom and dad married, her mother lived with them for a while and she started her nursing duties. She had three children (one who suffered from seer childhood asthma). In addition to her family, she took care of my father’s mother until she needed skilled care. Finally, she took care of my father during their 68 years of marriage and up to the day he died. In his last week in the hospital, mom was there every day from 9:00 – 5:00 sitting with him and making sure his lips were moistened and that he was comfortable. My mom was also a great friend.

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I believe that when I go through experiences in life, that it was God’s way of informing me that she or he was the person I needed to encounter in order to move 20 steps forward....

I believe that when I decide to look away from a young person in need of help, I am turning away my 20 year old brother, who yearns for nothing more than guidance....

I believe that when there is so much evil in a human being that there is truly a love that I need to draw out them, so they will realize that they can love too....

I believe that when I judge another, I have defined a part of me.....

I believe that a smile on my face can take away the pain of a suffering mother, father, sister, or brother; showing them the world in which we all live in is only one and not many....

I believe in me, the giver of life, who is seen and unseen, and who knows that what I give to another, is the joy or pain the other gives to another.....

You choose....who you believe in

Reflections

I believe in me....

I believe that when I go through experiences in life, that it was God’s way of informing me that she or he was the person I needed to encounter in order to move 20 steps forward....

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For four months, I volunteered with the children at St. Vincent’s Center. These were children who had been abused and neglected by their families. Some had been shuffled between foster homes, and St. Vincent’s was the first safe place that many of them had ever known.

Because I worked in the diagnostics unit, I saw a lot of kids come and go. Only one girl, Amanda, remained for the entirety of my four month commitment. I felt a special connection with her and, on my last day, she proudly presented me with a batch of brownies and thank you cards from all the children.

I felt guilty accepting their parting gifts. Had I helped them at all? Is it possible that I actually made things worse? After all, I was about to become one more person in their short lives to disappear. Maybe I only confirmed what these children already knew: nothing lasts forever and people always leave. Whether we stay for seconds, months, or years, we always leave. Even the longest relationships cannot outlive the people in them. But the changes forged by these relationships must survive. We have to believe that they do, or our actions are all in vain.

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He is waiting for me, as poised and patient as a praying mantis. I walk over on tiptoes, young enough to tread as though I belong in a realm where it is possible that I could take flight. In my eyes, he is only my grandfather, a man much older than I will ever be who likes his doughnuts sliced in half and spread with jelly. I do not realize that one day I will be tall because of the way he has to round his shoulders to fit through doorways or that sometimes I will write in all capital letters because that is what he did. It will be years before I understand that mornings like these, spent with my grandfather’s voice wrapped around me like a cape, will give me an unfailing belief in the power of crossword puzzles.

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I believe that happiness is a choice and that money does not buy happiness. Money can certainly help you live a comfortable life and obviously having money (especially a lot of money) will help you buy luxuries both big and small that might bring gratification, but true happiness must be found inside of us.

My husband used to have a glamorous job in the music industry and made a lot of money. A lot of money. We had an incredibly large house with a swimming pool and a walk-in closet that would make most women weep with tears of joy at the ridiculously large size of it. We went to expensive restaurants and vacationed in Europe. I had girlfriend weekends in New York and Palm Springs. I even met a few rock stars.

Then the company he worked for went bankrupt and seemingly overnight the music industry suffered the consequences of ignoring the power and the technology of the Internet and there were no more jobs for people like him. He was smart and talented and well-known, but he could not find work. And our life changed.

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I believe that eating out is one of the greatest joys of a civilized society. When I was growing up in the Midwest in the 60’s, a family of six was rarely seen together at a fine dining establishment. And only an eight year old girl would think a restaurant whose signature offering was greasy fried chicken accompanied by greasier French fries and applesauce was “fine dining.” But I recall those infrequent outings as special occasions.

Maybe it was destiny that my first job at age 16 was as a waitress in my small town’s Dutch Pantry. It was there that I was introduced to the pleasure of putting in an order for a meal and having it miraculously appear under the heat lamps just a few brief minutes later. I wondered why anyone would want to go to the trouble of shopping for ingredients and laboring over a hot stove (and let’s not forget the clean up) when she could pop into a restaurant and simply order what she wanted. I still wonder about that.

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My brother was 14 years my senior when he died in a car accident, I was 10 years old. In the short time I knew him he had been like a father to me. He took me on trips, stuck up for me, and as a fellow artist nurtured my creative soul. As one would imagine his death changed everything. My mother was devastated he was her firstborn child. They had a deep connection that went beyond any blood relationship. A few weeks before he died she told him about a dream that she had had of his death. She was psychic and this was one of the ways her gift revealed itself. Her premonition dreams were legendary and so my brother had no reason to doubt the message. He took this as an opportunity to visit family and friends, to say his goodbyes. This might sound macabre, but few are given this chance to complete a life in such a way.

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I am not my mother. I am my own separate person. It has taken me thirty-eight years to embrace this true. I don’t think my mother ever will.

My mother and I had a typical relationship when I was growing up: we fought often. She had ideas about how her daughter should behave and think. Her ideas clashed with mine. I was a teenager in the 80s, schooled by female teachers who believed girls were as good as or better than boys. My academic gifts were encouraged. Grades were important to my mother, but girls cooked and cleaned and took care of family in her world. I, on the other hand, was under the impression that women had overcome such restrictions. I had dreams of college, graduate school, and a better paying job than nursing. I wanted a family, too; but I did not believe I had to relinquish my dreams to have it. Our conflicting ideas were most evident when I was preparing for college.

“You won’t have to take so many hard classes when you get to college like you did in high school.”

A trickle of irritation rolled down my spine when I replied, “There’s no point in going to college if I don’t take the hard classes, Mom.” She had already told me I would be able to hand pick my husband once I got to school.

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I believe that the babies I've lost to miscarriage are still my babies. That my love for them survived our short time together. That no matter how fleeting, their lives mattered. Because they shaped me as much into the mother I am today, as the children I kiss boo-boos for and tuck into bed after the sun sets.

 

I wish I understood miscarriage. I want to know why. I want to know how. I want to know what I did or didn't do right. I wonder what kind of people the babies I've lost might have grown up to become. An astronaut? A president? A famous soccer player?

 

Would they have had my extroverted personality? Or my husband's quiet reserve? Would we have gotten along like two peas in a pod? Or would we have argued relentlessly about everything from politics to cell phone bills?

 

Would my babies have had the same dark brown hair and eyes as their eldest sister? Would they have been as artistically gifted as their middle sister? Would they have laughed the same endearing laugh as their baby sister?

 

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First it was an explosion in my mouth. Then it was an explosion in my life. Who knew that my taste buds and my soul had such common ground. I already had cookbooks and convictions. I wasn’t looking for something new. I wasn’t even feeling like I was hungry for something new. One day, it just happened. Naturally. Organically. And it forever changed my kitchen and my core.

 

To many, going vegan might not seem like a life-altering event. To most, it feels like a sacrifice. Giving up dairy. Giving up eggs. Giving up meat. But it is far from that. And it is more. It’s about inclusion, not exclusion. It’s about choice, not denial. It’s about being thoughtful, not causal. You can see how it is delicious in so many ways.

 

Each vegan bite made me dizzy with euphoria. Food had never tasted so good, so alive. At first I believed it was because my palate was getting the rebooting it needed after more than three decades of Midwestern cuisine. Then I thought it was because it satisfied my need to be in control. Having quit my job in Corporate America to work on my own, maybe being vegan was the new boardroom for me to conquer. Yet, I quickly learned it wasn’t about senses or ego. But it was definitely about me.

 

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Defeating cancer has been the single greatest achievement of my life thus far. It's a strange thing to be proud of, because, for the most part, I only had enough energy to lay around the apartment and write in between naps during my treatment. I didn't feel very proactive about my health. I just showed up for my biweekly treatments and took my medicine as I was told.

To be frank, I wasn't all that thrilled with my body enough to want to be proactive about trying to heal it as I should. I felt as if it had betrayed me by getting cancer in the first place, so I would punish it by making it undergo chemotherapy toxic enough to kill practically anything. Probably not a very healthy outlook on my cancer treatment, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I had to have the chemo anyway, and quite possibly, radiation once the chemo was finished, and nobody said that I had to be happy about it.

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This I believe…as a woman, I have no better inspiration than the women who have helped shaped my life and values. Don’t get my wrong, I love men. I need them in my life – my father, my brothers, and my future husband (whoever he may be). I love their power, intelligence, humanity and when all of this is wrapped in compassion…O, how beautiful!

However, nothing touches my soul like the spirit of a true kinswoman. It does not matter from which time period, location, or nationality. Being a natural people watcher anyway, if a group of diverse women are congregated somewhere; I’ll stop and take a slow look around. I wonder at their lives and histories. It makes my so proud to see our distinct beauties and physical differences.

Lately, I have come across younger women who lack the skill of befriending other women. They view other females, especially in their own peer group, as competition for men, for attention, for elusive kudos. They alienate the very beings who will someday be their only life-line to maintaining sanity. The need for that lifeline may not come for years or decades, but it willcome. In one form or another, one tragedy or another, one loss or another. If young women have not sought the support and friendship of other women, have not developed the needful skills of listening and being available, when their world crashes or their men can't relate, their misery will skirt the brink of the unbearable.

Because in the end, as designed by a Force much wiser than us all, women are encoded to nurture, protect and rally in support of anyone or anything in need of compassion. Women in touch with themselves possess the strength of warriors. Strength that cannot always be measured, but can always be felt. Strength that creates impact. Strength that creates change. Strength that heals and restores.

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I believe that everyone has a story to tell, and that listening to each other's stories saves us. I believe that stories weave us together with invisible threads that overlay our differences and lessen the spaces between us.

When I heard the stories of the teenage boys I teach in juvenile detention, I came to see them not only as those who had hurt others, but also as those who had been hurt. I listened--fascinated and often horrified--as they shared slivers of their lives with me: how the police knocked down the door of Grandma's apartment and arrested her for arms distribution...how they watched a baby drown in the wading pool of their fifth foster home...how they found a gun under some bricks in the backyard..how no one had ever read to them...how it felt to get "beat down" to enter or exit a gang.

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As a kid, I didn’t believe much in magic. I thought magicians were frauds and puppets were, well, puppets. I was even cynical about Santa. Not just because I’m Jewish, mind you, but because I could not understand how he could be in his house outside the local Deli while at the same time courting children at his castle in the mall.

As a young adult, I remained cynical; refusing to believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, or food items that supposedly contained the face of Jesus. Rather, I believed there was a scientific explanation for everything. Perhaps this is because my father is a doctor, trained as a general practitioner first, then a psychiatrist. For a long time, I believed he could cure anything. All my father needed was a quick consult with his Merck Manual of Medical Disorders, and the right drug, and everything would be OK.

This is what I believed, at least, until my mother’s illness. Just weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Like the fall of the towers themselves, everything I believed about my parents up to this point would now begin to crumble. My mother would not live forever and my father, rather than being the great healer I had imagined, would be revealed as only human.

This is when I started changing my tune about magic.

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When you set the bar of expectations high for people, they attempt to reach it. Even if they fall short, they will still come in much higher than if you set the bar low.

My son had a teacher who, despite being a special education teacher, did not understand how to diffuse my son’s autistic meltdowns. She did not understand that he was so intelligent that he was learning to mimic other class mates’ bad behavior in order to get out of assignments he was not interested in.

Because of his behavior, the school established an education plan that addressed behavior issues but didn’t do much to grow his academics. I dug my heels in hard, refusing to accept their plan. I told them I knew my son is capable of so much more, and they would do what it takes to help him achieve high goals.

Despite going into the following year academically 6 months behind grade level, he finished the year 6 months into the upcoming year. His behavior had improved as well.

Today he continues to thrive, is a role model to his classmates, and declares his desk a “math hater free zone”.

I believe that when you set the bar high, people rise to your expectations- and exceed them.

Reflections

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In the third grade at a small elementary school in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I was assigned a class presentation on a book about a historical figure of my choosing.I no longer remember the name of the book I settled on, but I do remember its subject: Sojourner Truth.

Sometime around 1797 Isabella Baumfree was born into slavery in New YorkState.She remained in bondage for the first thirty years of her life.In 1843, having obtained her freedom and afterwards becoming involved in the evangelical movement as a traveling preacher, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth began a long career of campaigning for equal rights, delivering her most famous speech, known now as “Ain’t I a Woman,” to the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention in 1854.Her words resonated deeply with me.I imagined her standing tall before the assembled men and women, graying hair drawn back neatly, her stance and body a testament to the hardships she bore and to the strength she gathered from overcoming those difficulties.

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~ I believe that events in our lives are planned out like a sort of intricate map. I DO NOT believe in coincidence or luck. I believe that people are placed in our paths to further our growth and help us gain knowledge about ourselves and the world around us.

The letter below was written by twenty years old, Mercy Adhiambo, from Kisumu, Kenya. She has been one of my greatest teachers and educators.

She is my hero.

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Hallo Kim,

There is this belief in our culture that women have a lower IQ than men, and they cannot make it past Primary school. I want to break this belief into so many pieces by going to college and getting a degree. I really want to do this so that anytime somebody says : "Women are dumb, they cannot go to school.” I can scream, “I’ve gone to college!”

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My favorite line from my favorite movie, Shawshank Redemption is:

“Hope is a good thing; maybe one of the very best of things, and good things never die.”

I gave my son up for adoption when I was 17 years old. For 30 years, I never dreamed I would ever know if he was even alive or not . His birthdays were a time for tears of sadness and joy too. Wishing he were with me, hoping we would perhaps meet in heaven, and hope that he had had a better chance in life.

When the laws changed to allow birth parents to try to locate their children, I started the procedures one must go through to locate him. Once, when I did not have a certain amount of money before the deadline, the paperwork was put on hold. I never gave up hope. Then, in December, 2007, I decided it was time to give that hope another chance.

Then one day in May 2008, I got the letter stating his name, address, telephone number and permission to call him, I went through half a box of tissue crying buckets! I wanted to be coherent when I made that call, so when I had finally calmed down somewhat, I made the call, a local call!

He could have been anywhere in the world, but he grew up in my hometown and was currently living in my old neighborhood.

sometimes we have to make monstrously painful choices, but in those choices there lies freedom that we cannot comprehend for as long as we try to avoid the truth.
~christine mason miller

 

Truth.Perhaps the simplest thing to intellectually grasp is the most difficult to be emotionally executed.

Two years ago, I was at a meeting of my peers.Sitting in a large basement rec room, surrounded by old friends, a convivial community of laughter, experience and comfort, we were volunteering our time working with our large youth sports non-profit.

My cell phone rang.

As soon as I answered, every eye in the room turned to me, shocked to silence at the vitriolic diatribe streaming from the handset.I had been avoiding the truth of my life for a long time, but the embarrassed looks and glances on the faces of my friends and peers, told me that I could no longer deny my reality at home.

Speaking my truth, taking accountability for my highest self, owning the responsibility for my own actions was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.When you take the steps to own your truth, to live out your soul’s contract, life immediately becomes infinitely harder, and at the same exact moment, infinitely liberating.

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­Once upon a time, nightmares woke me every night around midnight. Each night, realizing I was in-between worlds, I regained consciousness to the beat of a racing heart. Each time recalling one vague detail: I dreamt someone was in my house. I grew quiet, listening. Nothing.

To ease my mind, and my pulse, I went to every window and door. Locked. Nothing. Everything was fine. I gathered the cats and went back to bed. My mantra was, "You're okay. You are okay. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep."

I was living in a one-bedroom mill house in a tiny North Carolina town, cattycorner to a church and next door to a youth minister. The town's draw was its size. It reminded me of my hometown in Alabama. Moreover, after living in Atlanta, Ga., for six years, the slow tempo was appealing. I found a simple job and tried to make friends.

One night, I fell asleep, still in my work clothes. It had been a long, depressing day. My job wasn't working out, neither was my boyfriend. My neighbors seemed apprehensive and my car was being a pain.

Then, around midnight, I woke standing next to my bed.

"Give me the money," the shadow screamed.

"I don't have any money," I said back, earnest. "If I did I would give it to you."

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I believe that people can be good, and kind and caring. I believe that people can look past that which benefits them and see the bigger picture, something that is best for the greater good — or at least the good of those they love.

My grandmother loved me. When I was seven and my parents were getting a divorce, I was too young and too confused and too angry to recognize that my grandmother came with a halo, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that all that time she was a saint. She had her settled life on Chestnut Lane, in the house she and my grandfather had built, when along came the troops — my mother, my two-year-old sister and myself, a bratty, stubborn seven-year-old with a crumbling universe. When my mother had no one else to watch us, it was my grandmother who dropped everything to take care of us. When we had nowhere to live, it was my grandmother who moved out of her three-bedroom house on Chestnut Lane and into her twin sister’s one-bedroom apartment. One bedroom. My grandmother, a grown woman who owned her house and had raised her children and had watched her husband die, slept in the same bed with her twin sister. All because she loved her family. All because she loved me. All for seven years.

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This I believe: One person is all it takes. One soul, whose past was tangled in misery and confusion and hopelessly mired in addiction, can take those endless days of loss and shame and failure and transcend every bit of it to transform the life of another.

This I believe because that is what one woman’s journey and subsequent courage did for me. When Nan Hoy Shaw of Alpharetta, Georgia, was a child, she knew intimately the ravages of alcoholism on her family. She believed that she didn’t matter and, in turn, she became an alcoholic mom. One person too many finally turned from her and, at last, she reached out for help.

For many, the story would stop there, as one family’s beginning or end. Instead, Nan did something extraordinary. She decided that she did matter and determined to help others understand the same about themselves. Yes, she became a counselor and, yes, she shared her story. But she also instituted something even more precious: a telephone reservation for herself and those who know and began to want to know her – every day, for an hour and 15 minutes – every SINGLE day after day after day after day after day.

I understood at a young age that Mommy and Daddy have many issues. I felt their suffering as it was passed to me from them through their constant fighting, the incessant abuse and neglect. I understood that beyond what you see is the deeper truth of the matter. I knew, because growing up struggling for a meaning, a purpose, and an understanding, it became a learned behavior, understanding. I knew that the way things happen in life is tragic.

“Tragedy occurs because it was meant to. It happens to everyone and don’t think for one second you are ever singled out, because someone in another part of the world has it far worse than you could ever imagine.” We are all here for a reason. I feel that we are here to teach others and learn from others. This world is a classroom. It isn’t always going to be this deep philosophical conversation that will hold a lesson in life. Huge lessons can come at surprising moments.

Finding the strength to survive the storms may seem difficult. Often times some think it is a sign to stop or they just find it easier to quit and back out. I know now exactly what it takes to persevere and what happens when I second guess myself and turn my back on what I’m capable of. Personally, my strength in character was found when all else had failed.

A funny thing happened when I took my annual summer pilgrimage to the Ginormous Conglomerate Amusement Park That Shall Not Be Named (you know, the one located near the center of the earth’s core where it’s oh, I don’t know, four thousand degrees). As I stood in lines with a river of liquid running down the small of my back I was dumbstruck at the thought that entered my mind --ironically it had little to do with the eight dollars I’d been forking over for sodas. Looking over the flushed faces of my children I felt a small jolt in my heart when it hit me: poor Britney. And Lindsay. And all the others.

Poor little starlets indeed. Not for their current combined status of woe but for the somewhat obvious likelihood that these troubled girls have never done this. Really, a 45-minute wait for a 45-second ride? Standing eyebrow to eyebrow with sweaty strangers? Finding a public restroom in the nick of time? I’m thinking no.

I believe Nelson Mandela when he said, “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.”

Can you feel the weight of that truth resting on your shoulders like a backpacker carrying the worlds most precious resource?

I can. Everday I wake up knowing that what I fear most is my greatness. I look around me and see countless others whose lives have manifested the glory of God and I think, “Well crap, they just ruined it for the rest of us. Now I have to go ahead and be great too.”

I believe that we are all innately capable and competent beyond measure and staring this truth in the face is akin to alingning your eyes with the afternoon sun. Potentially blinding or equally empowering. My upbringing in the Christian faith and tradition harvested many wonderful qualities but preached a pervasive message I have come to disagree with in my adult life. The message being, that we are all poor, helpless, weak sinners and all we can do is sit around waiting for some male version of The Universe to show up in a timely manner and save us. This message perpetuates a ‘Victim Stance’ that I believe does not ultimately further the cause of the Universe.