Saturday, October 24, 2009

Finding Good in "Bad" Situations

I'm not a religious person at all but I seem to recall a Bible verse that says something like "...if there be any virtue, if there be any good, think on these things." I interpret that to mean, basically, look for the good! I remember seeing an interview with a soldier who'd lost both his legs in combat and he was a master at looking for the good. He said the "advantage" to having lost his legs was that it made it possible for him to counsel other soldiers who'd had traumatic injuries in the war. I'm not sure I could really look at it like that if it was me. But it really made me think.

Sometimes things happen that we think, at the time, are the most horrible thing in the world but then they end up being the best thing that could've happened. I used to be a workaholic big time! I worked probably 80+ hours a week and in my "off" time I was thinking about working. People kept telling me I couldn't keep up that pace forever. But I'd just laugh and tell them I was a "high energy" person and a great time manager. I prided myself on being able to accomplish more in a day's time than the average person. I called it "ambition". Now I call it insanity. Along about 2005-2006, I started to lose my "ambition". I started getting really tired and had a hard time carrying the work load. So I decided to cut out all my night work. That way I was "only" working 50-60 hours a week. Still I got more and more tired until finally I totally crashed! I slipped into a disabling depression and couldn't get myself out the door to work at all. Sometimes I'd get out the door only to get to my first jobsite and break down crying and not be able to stop. I'd come back home and crawl in bed. Of course, when you're self-employed, if you don't work you don't make any money so I quickly got further and further behind on my mortgage payment and car payment until eventually I lost both. May 6, 2006, I had to move out of my home. I was terrified and thought it was the most devastating thing that could possibly happen. But, after bumping around to a couple different rental places, I got the opportunity to rent an old farmhouse out in the country. And the two years I spent living on that farm were the most healing and growing years of my life thus far. I lost all my "stuff" but I found ME!!!! Living in the country forced me to be still and quiet and that's when I reconnected with my soul. And I finally did my grief work that I never did after my mother died in 2000. And I let go of anger I had bottled up inside me. I also became healthy physically. I lost 75 pounds and got off my blood pressure meds. Sometimes it takes a breakdown to make a breakthrough. I'm now VERY glad I lost that house and the car and all my other "stuff". Life's not about stuff.

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