This Too Shall Pass

Many years ago, I had these words inscribed on the inside of a ring that I always wore. At the time, I was going through unbearable pain after the accidental death of my youngest ten-year-old son. As you can imagine I thought my life was over, and I would never enjoy living again.Although it took a very long time little by little I began to accept the unacceptable, and I found that if I focused on other things, my pain wasn’t so overwhelming. After time the joy I found in my two beautiful grand-daughters began to heal the pain.

No-one in this life is spared some form of pain, loss or adverse event, at some time it is inevitable that something will impact you that you would rather pass you by. Today with the world’s economy impacting many lives you may be experiencing a painful period in your life. We read every day of job losses, house foreclosures, and other misfortunes happening, and you may be one of those affected.
The size of the problem is not the issue, but knowing that you can get through most things and emerge the other side and experience joy again is important.

It's true that there is always someone who seems to be worse off and with a bigger problem than yours. However, the thing is, we all experience our own heartache and not the pain of other people to the same extent. So whether your catastrophe is the loss of income or the death of a close relative, the pain everyone feels is still immense to them.

Very often one disaster creates many more, the one event setting off a string of events over which you have little or no control. When this occurs, you begin to believe that you will never get over it. Although life can't be the same again you can create a new normal and gradually start to recover your happiness, albeit in a different reality.

This too shall pass is a very good edict. I looked at those words on my ring many times, and found they helped me to get through that day. Eventually, we have to accept whatever has happened and at that point we can begin to recover. In some situations, we find that the eventual future is better than the past. It is like that old saying “Is it good, or is it bad”? We don’t know until the story is told.

If you are going through a painful time in your life let me encourage you not to despair. Life is full of change, and sometimes that change can turn out for the best, even if it doesn’t seem possible at the time. Take heart that you will heal eventually, even if you still carry the scars, and begin to appreciate the joy of life once more.