I cannot begin to count the number of times I have heard it said “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. So many times, it sounds so cliché!
But it’s true. Coming out through the other side of a tunnel, I am happy to announce that I am not dead, and I sure as heaven feel much stronger because I am aware that I contain an internal force that can never be destroyed. When I first found myself in the tunnel, I thought I would never see the light again.
I had believed someone who swore they would climb the highest mountain to be with me, only to realize that all along they were in the valley with someone else as I waited at the peak of the mountain. How could I possibly see the light again?
I thought the sun would never shine again when I realized a person I connected with so deeply that I thought they were a mirror image of myself, had simply painted a copy of a master piece to get close enough to be able to take from me and not to give. Why should the sun shine again?
Yet the lights did not go out. The sun did not stop shining. The lights cannot possibly be extinguished because they are INSIDE me. They burn fiercely in a sacred place that no thief or counterfeit can reach. In the radiance of my internal light it is crystal clear how strong I really am. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But only if you focus on the light within.
But Just because I throw my head back and laugh, I laugh as though I don’t have a care in the world, I laugh until tears stream down my cheeks – it doesn’t mean that I have never cried alone in the dark, cried until I had no more tears left to shed.
Just because I love deeply, genuinely and unreservedly – it doesn’t mean that I have never had my heart broken, crushed, torn apart, been left wondering to do with the tiny pieces.
Just because I trust, it doesn’t mean that I have never been betrayed. I laugh, I love, I trust because I must. Because as long as I live, as long as I have breath in me, I know I have a chance to start over, to experience joy, to experience love and to be connected to people I can trust.
