Hidden Gifts

Dear Reader,

I trust this note finds you exactly where it is that you need to be in this moment of time.

If this note finds you in a moment of struggle, I will say that one of the greatest (hidden) gifts offered to us by our struggles lies in the opportunity to develop faith in ourselves.  Faith that we can endure, faith that we can survive, faith that we can grow, faith that we can thrive.  Ironically, growth necessitates struggle.  Our difficult moments may not be pleasant, but they are rich with opportunity—opportunity to discover our strengths, our vulnerabilities, our wisdom.  Through challenges we can grow insight and awareness, empathy for ourselves and others, and ever so importantly, the capacity to entertain relational possibilities, life possibilities, self possibilities—to ask ourselves how vastly we would like to expand the depth and range of our lived experience.

Even when our greatest hopes and most cherished dreams become reality, they carry a struggle—because then we have to reckon with allowing this dream to become a part of our reality, of feeling worthy of such goodness, of trusting the possibility.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, the next time you are in the thick of struggle, ask yourself what that struggle is working to impart onto you.  If the struggle were an ally, if it were a devoted friend who only wants to see the best for you, what is the message or experience it would be hoping you take from it? Stay curious, trust the bigger picture (especially when you can’t see all of it), and move through the moment with a search for greater awareness. The gifts will reveal themselves in time.