journey to healing

Journeys seem to be the theme of my life...healing seems to always be mingled through this theme. Its funny. Let me begin by defining for you according to Webster journey and healing
journey: passage from one place to another.
healing: to cause to be overcome, to mend. to return to its original purity or integrity.
I am not sure that it is possible to be returned to my original state. I seem to change so much on the inside through each journey.
past journeys I have taken...moving a lot growing up. divorce. surviving cancer. surviving an abusive relationship. taking care of my father while he was dying. being a single mom. blending families. not being accepted. being judged. having a child with a mental illness. having a child with a life threatening syndrome. sending my first born off to college (yes I count that!)
As I write this out I realize we all have our own journeys to travel and some may say mine is an easy one. This is not so much a complaining post as it is a revelation of sorts. I am the person I am today because of the journeys I have taken. I am able to show tenderness to a hurting child because I was a hurting child. I am able to hold the hand of a person who has suffered abuse because one day a long time ago I was that person. I know the heart of a single parent. I have the ability to help soothe a broken heart because I have experienced many heartbreaks. I know the crushing feeling of losing your daddy all too soon in life. because I lived through that too. I heard on the radio the other day a young lady call in crying...she begged the host of the show to please explain to her why oh why do bad things happen to good people....he stumbled over words to console her and blandly explained what his opinion was. My heart ached for her. No comfort came to her hurting heart.
I believe good or bad life happens to people. what defines the experience as a good experience or a bad experience is our response to the circumstance. How do we handle ourselves during the storm. Are we bitter and crabby, hateful and angry? Admittedly I am not always the happy storm traveler. I do not always have the ability to see the positive side of things. Sometimes I do feel sorry for myself.
In reflection...I think I do try to learn from the storms of my life, I try to carry the lessons with me so that I may be a light to another during their darkest hours. There are situations that come and go in my life that I have to just to decide its ok if I never understand. Its ok because understanding does not help another. the compassion and empathy these life journies build up inside a persons heart are what makes the difference. I would not have compassion or the ability to empathize with another hurting soul had I not lived breathed and experienced the pain that paved the road of my life. Some of this also comes with allowing myself to heal. Allowing myself to let guilty feelings go. Allowing myself to not blame myself for situations I had no control. forgiving my own heart. Accepting my own humanness (if that is a word).
I find myself today nearing the end of one journey, in the middel of a second and just beginning a third. For each one different things are required of my heart. For each one I am learning different lessons. sprinkled with love compassion and a dash of strength I will come to the end of these journeys with more ability to change the lives of those that God brings across my path. On occasion He brings special people to cross my path in the midst of my journeys who bring comfort to my aching heart. For those moments I am grateful. But even more gratifying than those moments are those that arrive when I can be the comfort to someone who needs an understanding heart to hold them up when all their strength is gone.
I have been asked lately why I keep doing all the things I do.....because as much pain as I am carrying I recieve 100 times more joy when I am giving back. So even now while I am traveling on these journeys I am travleing not knowing what condition my heart will be in tomorrow I must continue my mission with foster children and their families, I must continue with the CASA work, becasue those experiences help me to complete my other travels. It is amazing when you recieve the gift of sunshine while walking through a personal storm...that is what dropz of hope does for me. that is what being a casa volunteer does for me. brings rays of sunshine to my stormy life....the warmth sustains me and gives me the ability to place one foot in front of the other...until one journey comes to an end and another begins....life is just that...a series of journies....ending in healing....