It's All Good, Even the Hard Stuff

By Pat Schwiebert, R.N.
pat@tearsoup.com

How does one find the will, the energy, the trust to keep saying yes to life when one doesn’t have the stomach for it? 

How do you believe that good can come about when you’ve been struck down so many times, spent five years wages on fertility drugs or been kicked out of the adoption pool because you are angry?  How do you love your unborn baby with all your heart knowing that this baby, like the previous eight could also die? How do you not become a gun carrier in the hopes of protecting the rest of your family after your wife has been killed in a shooting rampage at a mall? 

In our support group we often talk about the saying, “this experience will either make you a bitter person or a better person.”  Most of us admit we don’t like well meaning advice from those who have no clue what it’s like to be in our shoes.  But in the safety of the group we do talk about how sometimes we are tempted to let our hearts get small so we don’t get hurt again, or find ourselves not being able to see anything good in anything.

Grief gives us a chance to go into the darkness to heal our wounds—to be human and angry for what has been taken from us. How long we stay there varies.   But if we let it, grief will also give us the opportunity to be renewed and come out with new depth—a gift, some would say, from the one who died. 

Faith keeps us from being bitter.  It is an attitude.  And sometimes we need periods of ”self-talk” to remind ourselves that we can reframe our thoughts if we want to.  I often find myself saying in a difficult time   “It’s all good,  even the hard stuff”.  In that moment I’m choosing to not stay down.  I’m acknowledging it’s not easy, but I’m not going to let the hard stuff win.  I will look for a lesson in it. 

As I was writing this article I was imagining what it would be like to be lost on a mountain.   I decided I would rather die trusting that I was loved and missed and that people were looking for me, than to die believing no one cared and didn’t even bother to look for me.

A friend of mine who lived in the middle east as a missionary for many years tells a story of a woman who lived in a refugee camp and planted flowers outside her family’s tent.  She embraced beauty in the midst of uncertainty. Faith is living without having the answers.  Faith allows things to happen. It is the power that comes from a fearless heart. And when a fearless heart believes, miracles happen.  We don’t always know what that miracle will look like, but when we see it, feel it, smell it, we will say without hesitation, yes to it.

Faith keeps us from being bitter.  It is an attitude.  It’s God’s gift to us, if we are willing to receive it and sometimes it’s a conscious choice on our part to be willing to not let wrong win.