Hard weeks can test gratitude and attitude…

So, in the last several weeks, I’ve faced multiple things I wasn’t expecting. From illness I wasn’t ready for, to finding out I have an additional condition that less than 1% of people get that requires surgery no one here knows how to do. To being evacuated twice in two weeks due to power and pipeline-related weather issues. Other things I don’t need to talk about on here right now. It has been a lot.

In n my trying not to hyper-focus on all I was facing and keep my head above water, I without even meaning to or realizing I was doing it… hyper-focused on all the stuff oozing in around me from the outside world (especially the digital one).

All the negative stuff with the news, celebrities, and the world was flooding into everywhere I was looking. Because I lean heavily into empath territory, I have to be so careful not to pick up moods and emotions that are not even mine on a normal day.  

But I found I started shifting to seeing mostly negatives. As I did that, social media rewarded me with all negative stories (all of social media). So today I logged out. I went outside and I walked around the pen and listened to the birds and stood in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and breathed in the actual outside air.

I’ve talked some about how hard it was for me when I first started, to focus on the positive because my family was not that way lol. So, it is more natural for me to go first to the negative and volley back to the positive. I am the Christmas, wish on stars, dream big, never give up hope girl, that is truly me and always has been. But that doesn’t mean that is the first place I land in a struggle.

When I’m fighting hard, I have to battle moods, mobility becomes more difficult, my pain level goes up and I forget things, drop things, run into things. I deal with stronger than normal emotions and I still have to manage all my normal day-to-day stuff.

My normal instinct is to get very angry with myself for what I am doing wrong, for messing everything up. So, I have to make a conscious decision to think differently. I have to get my mind back to taking one step at a time. To address my thoughts. I have to use the pain, trauma, struggle, and my frustration with it to change my thought patterns. To shift from how does this limit me? To how can I use this?

So today, I am working on the positive. I am still here, the sky is still blue, I can still smile, and the breeze is still blowing. I still have a lot to be thankful for. So, I will start there, I will write a blog about what I am dealing with assuming it’s not just me. And after a little bit of focusing on the positive, the gratitude, the beauty. After a short time of staying off social media (other than sharing this) and away from my TV. I feel a shift because I am now experiencing and living my actual life. I’m not trying to vicariously experience what I can’t right now through someone else's life.

Because my life may not be easy, it may be a fight more often than not. It may not be what I expected it to be or even want it to be sometimes. But it is still beautiful and hopeful. I still have my faith in a God who loves, forgives, and saves in the worst of situations and far past my ability to, far past where any church is willing to. I still have my hope that no matter how bad it looks it can change in an instant for the better or turn out to not be a bad thing in the long run, even if I don’t understand it now.  And I still have my love and heart for hurting people, who feel invisible and overlooked and unlovable because I was them, I am them.  

If you come out of the storm with faith, hope, and love you’ve got the rest of this. So, if you are struggling like I have been I hope you read this and feel hopeful. If you can’t find hope today, you can borrow mine until you do. I believe you can make it through this. I believe you are smarter, stronger, more talented, and capable than you know yet. I believe this crazy broken world needs you in it. I believe you have a gift somewhere inside of you that only you can bring into this world. I believe you have everything you need to make it already in you, you just have to believe in yourself now. I already believe in you.

Be honest, Be real, Be you