Celebrating Lemonade Today

Sometimes we choose our challenges. I’ve chosen to run a half marathon. It was planned for. Measured. I chose the adventure.

Sometimes life chooses our challenges for us. Yuck! Challenges not of our choosing are thrust upon us. There is a reason we don’t choose some of these challenges. There is very little pleasant about them.

Today I celebrate accomplishment: a bitter sweet exhilaration that says, “Whew, I made it”. But I didn’t choose this one. Never would have chosen this challenge. Never.

But it was thrust upon me, and I had to figure out if and how I was going to tackle it.

Gosh, this was likely the biggest challenge I’ve ever had to face, and boy, was I overwhelmed by the task. And grieving. Grieving that I had to tackle the challenge at all, which made rising to the challenge all the more difficult.

I wish I could say that it was a total triumph, or that I conquered it flawlessly. Can’t say that. But I worked to survive-pushed myself to scrape myself out of bed in the morning, even when everything in me wanted to curl up and never emerge.

• I listened to music that was meaningful and comforting, gathering strength to face the intimidating and
  daunting challenge.

• I made a choice to let people “in”: to allow them to support me and help me. For a person who is a natural caregiver, it was a conscious and deliberate choice to allow people to help me. Then again, when I was helpless to meet the challenge on my own, it didn’t really feel like I had much of a choice. I needed the support. I was grateful for it, but it certainly was humbling to be so desperate for it.
• I cried…a lot.
• I sought the help of a professional. A gifted therapist who could remind me about what was real, and what wasn’t real, who could help me process the magnitude of the implications of the challenge, who helped me
  sort out what to do with my fear, whose gentle support helped give me the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

No, I didn’t sail through this challenge. But I did make a decision to trust that I was going to get through it.

I did make a decision early on to remember the kitschy line:

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

• I used the experience as a touchstone, to be able to get in touch with, and identify with clients who come to see me in the middle of their own hells. Although our circumstances may be very different, there are ways in which I understand terror, gut-wrenching grief, and the challenges of “moving on” in ways that I know “get” from the inside out. My respect for clients in their struggles has increased.

• I remember reading somewhere that the Chinese character for “crisis” is the combination of “danger” and “opportunity”. With support and encouragement, I have gone off in directions and rebuilt. One of the products of rebuilding is “Bergen and Associates Counselling”. I’m proud of what has been built…but it never would have happened without the opportunity that the challenge created and demanded.

• Me and mine—we grew older and wiser at a turbo-rate. Nothing like a challenge to unite a family. Life lessons that we’ll never forget. We learned to rely and trust each other. We learned to laugh over the little things, when there otherwise wasn’t much to smile about. It was rich. We had some meaningful times of looking for…and finding…rainbows in the midst of the rain.

And…April showers bring May flowers

It’s raining today. Feels like the sky is crying…not unlike I was all those years ago. But just as rain creates growth (you should see my crocuses!), tears can be the precursor to that which follows. Out of the ashes of my challenge all those years ago, little by little, bit by bit, things got better. Then things got good. Ahhhh.

It’s an odd day, because although the remembering of this thrust-upon-challenge comes around fresh in a sad way, even more is the remembering of, “WE MADE IT!” And a quiet satisfaction that “we done good”. That’s a powerful feeling, and today, that feels good.

Kinda like finishing a half marathon. Only better.