When Adversity Comes

Note to self:

Adversity isn't something to be conquered. It's something to be woven in.

We don't go looking for adversity, but it can find us anyway. Sometimes once. Sometimes, over and over, no matter what we do to avoid it.

The difficulty with this is that the worst experiences, the situations that we experience as horrific, wrong, or beyond anything we should have to face, don't just pass through us and leave. We can't make sense of them in the moment, so we don't digest them. We swallow them whole. And then they sit there, just outside of who we are, pressing on us through guilt we didn't earn and shame that isn't ours. It’s a tension that won't ease.

That is not weakness. That is what an undigested experience does. It stays foreign until we find a way to make it part of our life’s journey, rather than an unspeakable thing that happened or is happening.

So the question isn't, "How do I get over this?"

Instead, it's, how does this become part of my story?

Because we don't emerge from the worst things unharmed. We emerge changed and, if we're lucky and we're honest, still whole. Adversity doesn't get conquered. It gets woven into a life, and into a philosophy of living, that can hold it.

Think about it…

My weekly message is designed to keep your thinking on track in a busy world. Keeping it short yet still thought-provoking.