My personal journey has taken me through some very dark places. Periods of illness, death of a loved one, financial insecurity…
One of the darkest times was during my husband’s deployment to Afghanistan. During the more-than-twelve months of his absence, there were many times that I did not hear from him for 48 hours or more. Times when they were out in the field and unable to get to a phone or a computer to contact home. I became accustomed to that after a while, and I learned to live with the uncertainty. Toward the end of his tour, though, there was a ten day stretch of time when his unit was in a communications blackout, and they were not permitted contact with anyone here at home. Ten days, none of us heard a thing. Ten days; we waited and we worried, and we tried not to imagine the worst. Not imagining the worst was very, very difficult.
I know that I am far from unique in this. We each have felt the fear and uncertainty that comes with personal turmoil. Sometimes we feel helpless to do anything in the face of these stressors, and we grope for control of a situation over which we seem to have no power. But we do. The power is always within us to choose how we perceive the reality that confronts us. As the amount of effort we expend on the planting and cultivation of a crop influences the bounty we harvest, so too the amount and quality of the energy we give to a stressful situation determines what we take away from our experience.
Thankfully, my husband came home alive. But through the experience of those dark, silent moments of waiting I learned something about my own strength, and about the value of perspective. Because of this I was able to be there for those women whose husbands were not as fortunate; and for my own husband, who now faced the reality of losing his brothers at arms.
What kind of energy are you bringing to your experience today? How do you harvest light even in the darkness?
~ Christiana
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