I see everything that happens in life—and I mean everything—as a piece of the Grand Puzzle of Beauty.
Even pain can become part of that beauty, IF we allow something deeper within us to keep living—something rooted in the Source, or Origin, of our TRUE SELF.
When I was in prison, my hero was a little flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. Every time I saw it, I felt this simple joy. I was genuinely happy to see that little flower. A guard would pull it out whenever it came back. That bothered me, but the flower kept returning.
Finally, they sprayed it with poison. It died. Then, a few days later, it came back again.
They couldn’t kill the roots!
That heroic little flower taught me something about life long before I had the words to explain it. People can hurt what is visible. Life can pull at us, poison us, scar us, knock us down, and sometimes make parts of us disappear for a while. But if the roots are still alive, something can grow again.
“They couldn’t kill the roots” became, for me, more than a story about a flower.
It became a story about the Original Self. It became a story about the part of us that suffering does not have to destroy. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Or as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
I have come to believe that regretting the past can sometimes become a kind of rejection of oneself. It is a strange form of anxiety to expend time wishing parts of our story had never happened that we begin rejecting the person who lived through them. Driving forward while living in the rearview mirror promises a short future. The most secure prisons are the ones we construct for ourselves, and most of the prisons are illustrated with synthetic paint. CS Lewis suggested that “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.”
If you know anything about me, you know that I know something about prisons built of concrete and steel. But some of the hardest prisons to escape have no walls. All of our prisons look different on the outside, but on the inside, they are pretty much the same.
But real or imagined, those experiences and the perceptions that birth them are part of us. It is like we grow nerves into the illusions of life, and when the illusions are burned away, it hurts, because the nerves are real…and we might even feel a phantom limb after it’s all said and done.
The scars are part of us.
The cracks are part of us.
And sometimes the cracks in the sidewalks of life are exactly where the flowers grow.
When we move through life only emanating our injuries, we remain wounded and weakened, and we may become less able to lift up someone else in their hour of need. This might sound like a sharp left turn topic-wise, but part of the reason I survived the Dark Night of the Soul and not kill myself, is because I knew IF I could survive and understand the pain, in the future when someone else needs the help of someone who has been through it, I could be there for them. I can’t help sosmeone if I am dead is what I realized. I healed. I don't think it is a left turn at all. It is actually the fulfillment of the flower metaphor. Right?
Maybe surviving isn't only about what grows back in us. Maybe sometimes we grow back so that someday we can become a little bit of light for somebody else.
But healing does not mean pretending the pain never happened. Healing means discovering that the pain did not kill the roots.
Healing means discovering that the pain did not kill the roots.
Our job in life is to love others as we love ourselves. And if we have never learned how to love ourselves—our scars, our mistakes, our history, and the person who survived them—then loving others “as we love ourselves” can become confused with our own unmet needs. Been there, done that, or so says the guy who, albeit imperfectly, turned his will and life over to the care of God (God is Love).
So maybe the question is not:
“How do I erase the painful parts of my life?”
Maybe the question is:
“Are my roots still alive?”
And if they are...
something beautiful can grow again.
Don’t quit before the miracle happens!
And be merciful. The merciful shall find mercy.