Last night my husband and i came from an intervention. Intervention is the term used when an orchestrated attempt is done to get someone to seek professional help. The person in question is a nephew. It was like looking at some movie we have watched before. We predict lines. We anticipate familiar scenarios.
We have been there before. Their storyline is pretty much ours.
I just had an epiphany. However dark our experiences may be...however seemingly bad they are at the moment --- they are gifts. Nothing is wasted. When we have gotten over that hump in our personal histories and find ourselves ashore after navigating rough waters, we have gifts in our hands to share with others. True that everything has a purpose even if it doesn't make sense. The strength and wisdom we receive is precious yet loses its value when not given away.
So, if you find yourself in dire straits, and finding it hard to believe that you are being granted gifts --- just take it from those who have made it to the other end. You, too, have gifts waiting to be claimed.
When i was a young girl of 19 and pregnant out of wedlock my cousin once wrote me this note of encouragement : "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands." She was quoting Richard Bach in the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. What she left out was the corollary: "You seek problems because you need their gifts."
