All the Love in the World

My Kindle keeps resetting itself, making it difficult to work on my papers. If it keeps it up, I may have to reset to factory defaults. C'mon little Kindle! Stay on! This is the second time this has happened. Third time's the charm, and then Amazon gets a phone call.

Some wonderful friends are taking me out tonight to celebrate the anniversary of my unexpected singlehood. After sitting for (hopefully) my last set of WEST-Es this morning, I was reflecting about things I wish I'd known a year ago -- lessons that maybe only a really awful breakup can teach. My early morning Facebook status read something like this "Today I am thankful for friends who held me when I cried and brought me food and for the parents who let me come home a year ago. What a difference a whole year makes!"

Lesson #1 -- All the Love in the World is within reach.
Most of my friends know how much I love them because I tell them I do. Wow -- I just teared up thinking about this next sentence. One of the lessons I learned is how loved I am by my friends and family. I have a pretty amazing cheering section filled with people who will bring me food when I'm sad and will share my joy. All the love in the world is within my grasp -- it surrounds me daily. Words cannot express how blessed I am and how grateful I feel for all of my people. Thank you for laughing and crying with me. I love you all.

Lesson #2 -- Sometimes God puts blessings in unexpected places.
I'm not sure if I've written about God here before. I have a quite strong belief in God. Some things happened to me when I was younger that I took as proof of God's existence. My faith has been shaken and tested at times, but I always return to it. I'm not shy about being a very liberal, progressive Christian, but I don't really bring this up in everyday conversation. Sometimes being Christian in Seattle feels very lonely.

Anyway, with my very unexpected singlehood came many blessings. The biggest one was that I discovered a confidence and a fierceness I didn't know I had. Another was lesson #1 -- realizing how much I too am loved.

Lesson #3 -- Grieving is healing.
My pastor Catherine listened to me while I sobbed. She told me "God teaches us that this will get better. But you can't go around your grief. Nor can you go over and under it. You just have to get through it." She reminded me that joy awaited me on the other side. Grief sucks, but it gets better. And the joy awaiting me on the other side of all that grief was so joyful that it was worth it. I'm a person who lives her life joyfully. I've learned recently that this is an aspect of my character that new people pick up on rather quickly. Grieving is hard for me because I usually live a joyful life. But I think that, through the grief, I learned how to have empathy for others going through similar situations.

Lesson #4 -- When you're knocked down, you come back stronger.
A year ago, I was broken. And now I climb mountains. If that's not coming back stronger, than I don't know what is!

Those are the big ones. As I pause to reflect, I am reminding myself that this will be my year of living joyfully. My "new year of happy," so to speak. It's easy to live joyfully when you're surrounded by all the love in the world.

Thank you.