Hasn’t our weather been amazing? There is something special about the rain. Yet when you think even more deeply about it, when the rain stops there is silence, a freshness in the air, a sense of a new beginning. The rain allows for new growth.
The local hills have been covered with spring flowers and more greenery due to the rain.
This is like life. We go through our own rainstorms: a loss of a job, an end of a relationship, a medical issue. These are the rainstorms of our life. We all experience them. Sometimes it feels like the storm is never going to stop. Or, just as we think the rain is letting up, a downpour happens.
What is the lesson here? It reminds me of David Rico’s book “The Five Things You Can’t Change and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them.”
I did not like this book until I was able to digest its contents. I realized how true and how important it was to embrace and not push away these realities of life.
Those five things:
- Everything changes and ends.
- Things do not always go according to plan.
- Life is not always fair.
- Pain is a part of life.
- People are not loving and loyal all the time.
These difficult and painful life experiences allow us our own growth that we might not have experienced if we had not had these challenges.
Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently puts this into perspective: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.”
King certainly understood what it meant to go through tough times. We all have in us the ability to come through our rainstorms as long as we do not get stuck in resisting what we are experiencing.
Instead, we need to embrace these experiences and allow the growth to come through the pain. Easier said than done. We all deserve to have our grief, to feel the sadness. Then it is time to take a breath, be kind to ourselves and ask “what is this inviting me to learn?”
I often see parents rescue their children from challenging experiences. Of course we have to keep them safe, but after that we need to let our children learn through their choices. If we stop them from experiencing pain, they go into the world unprepared.
I’ve had several MRI’s performed. The first one made me realize how claustrophobic I am. When I went back for my next one, I brought lavender oil, an eye shield, and a friend who massaged my feet. I was still scared and wanted to resist having the MRI done, but instead I embraced it and asked myself what it would take to get me through this.
We will continue to traverse the challenges of life, yet how we decide to manage these challenges is up to us.
Contact Dr. Shelly Zavala at DrZavala.com or Drzavala@mac.com.
