I find it so interesting how when we start to go down a path of self discovery and start to figure things out…we expect ourselves to be perfect and because we talk about it and try to share what we’ve discovered in the hopes of helping others, the people we’re talking to…expect perfection, or they at least expect that we don’t talk about problems anymore.

I remember one comment on this blog…which I deleted, that said…”Every few years, you talk about your bad marriage”. How strange that someone would say that. Even though I thought it was a strange comment and a rude comment, I was clueless about how to respond. I kept thinking…Is that true…do people think that?

I will tell you honestly, my marriage has been in the complete toilet and it has been great and it has also been somewhere in between, but here I am. Still married. Still trying to work on myself and in turn, work on my marriage. I know that every single thing that has happened to me…no exceptions…I brought on myself. The bad things, the good things…everything! That’s a hard pill to swallow. But, I know that I was supposed to learn something from every hard experience that ever happened to me. Here’s something I heard today that nearly brought me to my knees…

Dear God, Please don’t waste my suffering.

What in the world does that mean? Here’s what I think it means. I think that our suffering teaches us and in turn, we teach others, so it isn’t wasted!

Pretending that your life is perfect, that you don’t have problems, that your heart doesn’t ache because of something you’re going through will take you down a long, dark, hard road. We are human and experiencing the lows and the highs in life is normal. The lows hopefully teach us to celebrate the highs. How do you ever know what you want if you don’t know what you don’t want? That’s what conflict and suffering teach us.

Is my life better than it has ever been…the answer is yes! Do I still have hard days…the answer is yes! And I will tell you this…life is supposed to be good and easy and we are meant to have our hearts desire, but that doesn’t mean we won’t feel pain and our hearts won’t hurt.

We are surrounded by other people on different stages of their journey. And some of those people are people we love with all our hearts. We hurt for them, we have conflict with them and we also celebrate with them. You can’t live in a bubble where things are always perfect and you wouldn’t want to. Human interaction is what we all crave, even though it hurts sometimes. Going through tough times with people we love…helping people we barely know who are in need, praying for the world during times of terrible suffering. These are things that are part of the human experience. We can’t go through our whole lives “relaxing”.

Yes…we can trust that things are always working out for the greater good. Yes…we can pray for world peace and for peace in our homes. Yes…we can love with all our hearts and meditate and pray. But, we will still have bad days, we will still fight with our partners, our children and our friends and it’s ok, because our capacity to love transcends all of that. Our connection to the Power and the Oneness of the Universe will take us through anything if we let it.

So to wrap this up, clearly no one is perfect. No matter how much we’ve figured out the secret to life, and no matter how much we meditate and pray, we still have to deal with each other and it’s going to be messy, hard, beautiful, fun, amazing, painful and in the end…what life is all about!