Silver linings

I see silver linings.  The darkest clouds may block the sun but looking a break will happen and the silver lining appears.  I photograph these breaks and bits of sunshine.  I find them in my life too.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.   Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This quote hangs in our hall way.  A reminder that everyday we have experiences to teach us.  

Psalm 119:71 King James Version (KJV)

⁷¹ It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.

I noticed that some experiences are there and if I do nothing with them they are just experiences.  However, if I process and incorporate things into my life I can find the good in the experience.  We lived in Spokane, Washington when Mount Saint Helen blew her top.  Ash traveled clear across the state and covered the city with ash.  Fear struck our hearts.  The freeway was shut down and the city was in a 3 day locked down.  Our neighbor worked in the military and knew what test to run to see if the ash was safe.  We started clean up and all that ash I dug into the ground around my roses.  My flowers blossomed with a bumper crop that year.  Unfortunately, some people feared the ash so left the ash on top of the ground.  The ash formed an unpenetrable crust that suffocated many of the rose bushes in the city.  Another example is manure.  Left in huge heaps does little but stink up the air.  Spread around it fertilizes grass and flowers.  I find the uses and silver linings in experiences.  I had cancer 11 years ago before I started counseling.  The experience I had with cancer gave me experiences that prepared me for counseling.  I learned to trust a professional.  I learned that I can go into something feeling pretty good but come out feeling awful knowing in the long term it is for my healthy or safety.  My ability to find the brightness in a situation garnered criticism that I was a Pollyanna.  (Pollyanna only saw good in everything.)  I reminded my critic that I was very aware of the bad things happening.  I simply choose to find the buried treasure hidden from first view.  I love the story by Dr. Banks about the twin boys that one was an optimist and the other a pessimist.   

First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist.  Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys.  But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears.  ”What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baffled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?”  “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.” 

Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist.  Trying to dampen his out look, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure.  But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist.  Then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands.  ”What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist. “With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!” 

KavinCoach helped me dig through the manure in my life to find the pony, bits of treasure or lessons to learn.  The experiences of my past were cut in stone.  What I did with those experiences made all the difference.