Most lives seem to be a mixed bag of good and bad experiences. There may be events and circumstances which could have a negative impact on us, stunt our growth, block our progress, and stop us from living out our full potential.
But through my journey --and it's been a spiritual and mental one-- I'm realizing that those negative events or circumstances can be turned from stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
While I was growing up, my parents had an unhappy marriage. When I was 13, as I witnessed my parents marriage fall apart, two ideas came to me:
- There had to be a better way -- a better way to work through marriage, or for that matter, any relationship
- Even though I saw them expressing all these negative qualities, I also saw that they both expressed qualities I deeply appreciated. I had an awareness that I could pick and choose the qualities I liked in each of them and take them into my experience, and express those in my life.
My Dad:
Even though Dad and I struggled in our own relationship, I saw qualities in him I appreciated:
- he loved to think! He was logical, and had had a deep desire to understand.
- he had an insatiable curiosity -- he wanted to know everything about everything... especially the physical world, nature, and space. Even his career bore out that inquisitiveness. He was an engineer at JPL which involved him helping to send unmanned spacecraft to explore the universe in the 60's and 70's.
My Mum:
We were kindred spirits of a sort. The qualities in her I appreciated were:
- her joy and vivacity for living. She found fun in most everything (except I guess her marriage)
- her deep spirituality, her love for God and mankind
- her unconditional love for me. That unconditional love is so important to me that I strive to express it in all my relationships. I now believe that unconditional love is founded on the basis of each individual's innate value as a child or baby of God.
My parents divorced that same year. It was a hard experience for all of us. But through it all, God was with me, parenting me, loving me --loving all of us-- unconditionally. Later I understood that all those qualities I appreciated in my parents are actually sourced in the One Parent, God.
What I learned from that tough situation I would not trade. What seemed to be a stumbling block to my joy, my future happiness, my contentment and progress turned out to be a stepping stone.
We can all emerge triumphantly from tough situations and find the good in each life experience. That not only blesses us, it blesses the world at large -- with the recognition that good always triumphs because God always wins. And God always loves all of His/Her sweet babies - including you and me.