If you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain

I have not blogged for a long time because nothing was jumping into my head that I felt like I could put into words. I am not a blogger and I would not say what I do is blog…I just happen to have a website that I can put my thoughts out on. Anyway…..tonight I was checking out at the grocery store and it popped in my mind.

As I was waiting to check out I started reading the headlines of all the magazines they were selling: “Taylor Swift having a boy!” and ”So and So Divorced and Never so Happy!” My first thought was, “oh my gosh do people actually read this crap” and then my second thought was, “that is what is wrong with our world.”

Let me explain.

Life is hard. What I have learned through our experience is that everyone has a story. If you do not have one yet, I hate to break the news to you but yours is coming. Life isn’t easy. Life isn’t all puppies and rainbows. I think we all wish it was all of the time but it isn’t. One of my favorite quotes is, “If you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain.”

Because life is hard it is hard to be a positive, faith filled person. We are surrounded by so many negative factors in our world that can cause us to go down that path….you know the saying misery loves company.  I am serious about this. Take some time and look around.  You will see and hear:

• Gossip at the office, on TV, or in magazines at the checkout line. I guarantee very few of these are about the wonderful things going on.
  
• The news…enough said.
• General TV, Talk Shows
• A LOT of social media
• The thoughts in your head

Let me talk about the last one. Through all of this you can be your own worst enemy. Just recently I have really started coming to peace with the fact that my daughter dying is not a dream, I am not responsible, and it is ok for me to be happy again. It has taken me sometime to not feel guilty about smiling, laughing, or not visiting the cemetery multiple times a week. My mind had been telling me that I needed to be sad; I needed to do certain things to show her I love her. Then finally one day like a Mack truck I thought that is so stupid.

I had to work very hard to turn my negative thoughts into positive ones. What I learned through this process was to avoid as much negative energy as I could because it is an energy drain and I literally could not handle it. I looked to people and places that were positive and would give me hope.
This is not easy and something that I need to continue to work on. However, if you are facing a life event I would encourage you to look around and try to get as much negative energy away from you. It has helped me a lot!   If you are in a good place try very hard to be that positive impact, that positive energy for someone else.  You never know what story they are living at the moment or that time.