All Broken Up

It’s odd to think that you can be happy when something you cherish gets broken.   You work so hard to gather nice things into your life, protect them, maintain them with loving care and then they end up broken.  Depending on what it is that breaks, your heart sometimes breaks along with it.  

There are lots of material things that you can keep safe, protect from clumsy hands or outright restrict from use.   All of us have special cabinets or drawers where we keep those cherished items that mean so much to us.  We keep them closed up and locked down so they are not damaged and as a by-product of all that protection they’re never used and perhaps never provided the opportunity to serve the purpose for which they were originally created.  That’s a shame, but at the end of the day, they are just things. 

I’m grateful today that I did have something break.  What I broke was a mixture of things that I had worked very hard for many years to create.  They were a cobbled together assortment of items that I had gathered from all my experiences in life to-date.  One by one, I piled them all up and created a wall against my own belief that I am meant to be happy and joyous. 

I’m having one of those plateau moments in my life (where you can see something you had been missing before).  Nothing too dramatic;  I’m not changing jobs, upheaving my family or becoming a vegan (I just like my steak too much), but I have had a realization that although I’m a fairly well-adjusted happy person, that I’m actually worthy of being happy.  There was something in my mind, heart, and soul that always doubted that I had earned the right to be happy, that I was a good enough person to warrant all the blessings I’ve had in my life.   I had a happy childhood and have a happy marriage, great kids and great friends, but I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I was expecting that at some point soon “the big guy” was going to realize that the scale was tipped too far in my favor, prompting him to make a needed correction. 

Through a simple conversation with a good friend, I now know that I’m supposed to be happy; that it’s part of the plan and I don’t need to feel guilty about it.  Sure, I need to take care of those less fortunate than myself, but not by feeling guilty for being loved and content in my own life. 

Some of that cobbled together wall is still there, but it now bears a gaping hole, through which I can see many of the things it was “protecting” me from.  What a shame.  Hopefully you don’t have this same wall in your life, but if you do, it’s probably holding you back from your intended purpose as well.  If so, give me a shout, I’ve got a wrecking ball you can borrow.