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LightHearted Musings - God Grant Me the Serenity…
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on November 30th, 2008
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
–Rienhold Niebuhr
How many times must we tell our story before it makes sense to us? How many years must go by before our perspective is complete? Is there ever a way to fully understand everything about one’s life?
I saw the movie “Signs” the other day. I was struck by its message that when life takes its twists and turns, you can’t see the big picture while you’re slogging through the muck. It all looks like…well, muck. In the movie, there are so many little and not so little pieces that all have to congeal to help the characters survive. Some of those pieces are heartbreaking, others are seemingly minor. Some happy, some sad. They certainly don’t seem to have any pattern to them. It’s only in retrospect that one can see how each delicate piece fits into a whole not so muck-ish pattern.
In my own story, the muck was neck-high for a while, high enough to keep me constantly on my toes, afraid to drown in the pain and despair from my neck injury if I let down for just a minute. On my guard for month after month, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, even second after second. The fatigue that came from constantly standing on my toes and gasping for air was understandably profound.
How did I get out of the muck? I finally agreed to sink into it, to admit that even ballet dancers can only stand en pointe for so long, and to breathe it in. What I found was that I could inhale muck and not die. My attempts to stay above the fray had caused me more pain than just giving in to my basic human frailty. I also found that my family was willing to live in and embrace me in the muck, no matter how dirty they got.
I learned that there are waves, tidal changes, that if the muck is neck-high now, next week it might be to my chest, the next to my knees, and then sometimes back over my head again. If I just stuck it out, eventually I’d get clear of it again…for a while anyway. I found that it was easier to walk through it, to make the changes and go in the directions that I needed, with my feet firmly planted on the ground instead of tiptoeing along trying to save myself.
What I learned was that we all slog through the muck at times, that we all have tidal changes, that we all need others to love us and embrace us while we’re breathing it in. I found my perspective not from a distance but from being willing to live in the thick of it.
Dr. Molly
very well put and thought about!
i do EFT NLP EPFX and other things and from what you wrote i find a similarity to the concept in EFT AND TFT… that we need to love ourselves WHERE WE ARE.
it is a great perspective and thanks for sharing that.
walk in beauty,
claudia
Comment by claudia — November 30, 2008 @ 10:42 pm