What's Your Track Record?

I too have found myself in tears sitting on the bathroom floor.  Full disclosure…it is a heated floor in my current home.  But nevertheless, just like in “Eat Pray Love,” I think we all can relate to those moments when you wonder “how in the world can I get through this?”  AND “why me???” 

I recently was having a spirit fatigued day, feeling broken and small and I thought ”why me?”  But then after sitting with it for some time I got to “why not me?”  We all have challenges.  Some small and some so flippin’ big you feel like your heart might simply break open.  But like the poster above, I realized that over my almost 49 years, my track record of getting through challenges is pretty good. Be it divorce, death of friends and family, disabling health challenges where I barely left the house for a year, addiction and continuing recovery of friends and family, and financial struggles including having a car repo’d and living on grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup…a buffet of full-on CRAPPY days that sometimes lasted months.  

And almost every time the mantra I muttered was “THIS TOO SHALL PASS.”  It was the only thing that I could hold on to, to hope for.  And it was true.  Every time. 

The beauty of living this full spectrum of life is that we get to experience ALL of it.  We don’t get to choose just happy and easy, positive attitude aside. Noah Levine, a Buddhist practitioner says "Life is an internal journey of taking full responsibility for our own happiness and finding fulfillment through wise actions and compassionate engagement with the world as it is.”  The three most important words in that statement are: AS IT IS.  We get to choose AS IT IS or we can suffer.  Boom.  After choosing it, then we can figure out how to move through it. 

We all have BLESSONS.  My spell check is screaming at me!  But no, that’s not a typo.  A BLESSON is what happens when you see the blessing in the lesson that challenges you!  So the next time you are suffering on the bathroom floor remember these three things:
This too shall pass.
What is the BLESSON in this?
And
What is my track record?