Adversity works as a giant stepping-stone in your spiritual growth. You’ve heard the phrase about enduring hardship with its promise to make you a better person, if it doesn’t kill you first. Most likely overcoming difficulties won’t kill you, but undoubtedly it will wield its longs arms around you with it far reaching effects.
Adversity becomes you, making you who you are, adding to your desirable qualities, building character. You grow stronger, more reliable, consistently resilient, and creatively resourceful. Your ability to overcome obstacles defines who you are. When the chips are down, the true YOU emerges.
Adversity also becomes you, making you more becoming, more beautiful – a better listener, an understanding friend, a loyal confidant, and a respected advisor. The warmth in your eyes of understanding is an attractive gift. Your air of understanding, compassion, and empathy are welcoming to many.
Bottom line is: Adversity works as a necessity in making you real…a real person and a treasured friend. A wonderful description of the importance of hardship is found in the children’s book, “The Velveteen Rabbit”, when the rabbit asks, “What is real? The Skin Horse replies, “It’s a thing that happens to you”. “It doesn’t happen all at once.” “You become”. “Generally, by the time that you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and your get loose in the joints and very shabby.” “But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Remember that some days you feel just like that, worn, tattered, and vulnerable without your fur coating, but it doesn’t matter. You are REAL.
My dear friend and gifted poet, Carole Ellison, sent me this poem last week in response to my blog about “doing life”. Thank you, Carole, for sharing your beautiful poem:
HAVING BY DOING
No one ever attained inner harmony
By pondering the experience of others.
Wisdom does not come to us
By reading about another’s.
No, it’s the mistakes, the dead-end moves
That are the portals of discovery;
An opportunity to learn, my dears,
A chance for recovery.
Wisdom does not come to us
Until we pass through the fire.
The journey is one we must take ourselves,
And wisdom we’ll acquire.
If you don’t enter the lion’s den
You will never capture the beast.
Take great big bites … don’t be afraid;
And welcome to the feast.
This week’s challenge is to change your glasses. Turn those spectacles viewing life as a problem, into seeing that each situation is an opportunity. Celebrate the opportunities for joyous growth, until all your hair has been rubbed off!
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