What happens when your world is turned upside down? When you're hit with a chronic illness, a death of a loved one, what do you do? Do you learn anything from the experience? What's you "take away"? Do you give up? WHAT DO YOU LEARN FROM THE EXPERIENCE?
Questions flood our daily thoughts through any crisis. Memories come rushing back like flood waters breaching a levy. We rethink situations, we may even have regrets at how we handled it. Despite any regrets there is always lessons hidden in the moments of our lives. Whether or not we pay attention and learn from the experiences is up to us.
Every experience forms us and shapes us, like a ball of clay. When faced with chronic illness, it's easy to succumb to the pressures of feeling disconnected from what's happening. Your world as you know it stops. It changes and becomes something entirely different from what you've been accustomed. Things you once took for granted may seem out of reach.
When I became ill and spent hours in the hospital, I would look out the window and see a sunny day. I wanted to feel the sun stinging my skin in the August heat. When my mother passed away, I would wake up in the morning without that familiar smell of Maxwell House brewing in the kitchen. Those things I took for granted, those things I missed. I still smell the coffee in the morning and I still feel the hot August sun, but I never take them for granted. Now I inhale that aroma of coffee a little deeper, and I stretch my arms out and hug the hot sun. I'm thankful and grateful for those simple pleasures. My lessons are endless, and I learned not to take anything for granted. I relish each experience whether good or bad.
I live to believe that each experience holds a lesson for me. I learn more about myself, and hopefully it maked me a better person. A person open to change, and a person who wants to experience what life has to offer. I accept all these changes in see the beautiful knowledge locked within each experience, for that is how I became me. I move on, I live, I learn, and I evelove and in the end I'll be better than yesterday and ready for tomorrow.
