Acceptance

I had a moment of clarity a week or so ago. Or more like a slap in the face of realization. 

So often we say to ourselves “the universe has a plan for us” or “God’s got this, it’s part of the plan.” And we say this when things are hard, when we are sad, when we feel hurt or wounded by someone else’s actions.

I do believe that there is a plan for each of us. 

That when bad things happen it’s still part of the plan. 

But the part of this that I fail to think about, that I’m going to go out on a limb and say maybe you do too, is the flip side of that. 

A couple weeks ago a thing happened that doesn’t exactly affect me, but also it does. I won’t go into detail because it’s none of your business, but suffice it to say that it brought out some emotions in me that I thought I had dealt with, emotions like bitterness and hate. 

Now if you know me I am not a hate-filled person. In fact I don’t even let my kids say that word, it’s just not ever ok to say you hate someone. You can strongly dislike someone, or not want anything to do with someone but, at least at my house, we don’t hold a place for hate. 

That said, 2021 was hard. 

Hard life things happened. 

And those things affected me, my family and my friends.

We all had to figure out a new way to live with the bad things that happened.

And even after I thought I had let go of those feelings, a couple weeks ago I read a news article on Facebook about “the thing that happened that doesn’t exactly affect me” and it caused a lot of emotions to boil up. 

Those emotions were ugly. 

They were bitterness and resentment and a little bit of hate. 

And as I was having a conversation with my sister and I listened to her rant about the news article, I said, “Well, everything happens for a reason” and then it hit me. 

I’ve only ever used that phrase in relation to how those “things” effect me. 

And in that moment I thought-but this thing, this incredibly unbelievable, sad, thing that happened is affecting the person on the other side too. It’s affecting their entire family and they were likely feeling all the emotions we were feeling (but for different reasons) and even though this seemed like a sick cosmic joke, maybe it was the universe taking care of the other family. 

Maybe the thing that happened was the universes way of making things better for them, even if it didn’t for me. 

What I’m saying is, last week I learned a life lesson. 

When the universe dishes out whatever “reward” or “punishment” we have coming, there is almost always someone else on the other side receiving the exact opposite we are. 

And that’s a really big pill to swallow.

To be able to accept that even if we are in a low time, feeling like we are getting hit with blow after blow, and even when we accept that this is part of “the plan the universe has for our life” we have to accept that it’s also part of the plan for someone else’s life. Even if it leaves us hurting. 

We all have growth and healing to do. 

There is always going to be seasons of learning, loving, growing and healing. 

It’s the natural ebb and flow of life. 

But actually taking the time to let the realization sink in showed me that life is not just about how I learn to heal from hard things.

It taught me that when I may be experiencing joy and love, it may have caused someone else to experience loss or sadness; and when I may be going through one of the worst times in my life it may be bringing joy and healing to someone else. 

And it taught me that, to be fully healed and whole, we have to accept both sides of that coin.