Cycles of Life-And what we can get out of them!

Have you ever noticed how full of cycles life is?

It seems time and time again we learn the same lessons, we make the same mistakes, or different mistakes in similar ways, and then, again and again, we have the opportunity to grow, to become this better, stronger person.

If you’re in one of the less pleasant phases of a cycle it could be easy to let that bring you down, think—what’s the point of it all?!? Or cry out, ‘life’s not FAIR!’ And it’s not. And that’s okay. Because if it were fair we’d probably never appreciate those days when the good does come our way.

As much as the holiday season is about love and joy and being thankful for all  you have in life, it’s also a time when it’s very easy to feel down. Maybe you can’t afford to get your family all you’d want to get them. Maybe you’re far away from your loved ones and seeing all those social media pics of people having fun with family and friends is sending you into states of loneliness or even resentment. Maybe just when you’re thinking life is supposed to get easy and relaxing you’ve been hit with some news or situation that is anything but.

Kind of steals away from the holiday cheer, doesn’t it? Well, maybe … but then again maybe not. What if we could really believe all of those inspirational quotes we see? What if we held onto truths that so many others have learned, that we’ve even learned ourselves in the past (back to those cycles, right?) and take whatever is threatening to steal from our joy and turn it into an even STRONGER reason to be happy, to be thankful, to be alive!

If this is a season holiday when everything is great and you couldn’t ask for anything more, wonderful—cherish that!

If it’s not …

I challenge you to transform your situation into something better by searching deep inside yourself to find that ability to see life—ridiculous, complicated, hard, scary, unbelievable life—for all it has to offer.

 

As a writer, people often assume aspects of our stories are taken from our life—sometimes this is true, sometimes it’s not. Often, I find it actually goes the other way around. Cycles again! Does life imitate art or does art imitate life?

In the past year I’ve seen time and time again how words of wisdom that were written for one of my characters were actually words I needed to hear myself. Maybe not at the moment of writing, but weeks or months later.

In my book Where There Is Life the main character (Autumn) has a huge loss in her life, and when we lose something—be it a person, a dream, a friendship, a future we’d envisioned for ourselves, or even a worldview—there’s always a time of grieving. We need that. But every loss brings with it the opportunity for something more. Autumn discovers this, just as I’m discovering it again, just as I hope anyone reading this who is having a hard time discovers.

Where there is life, there is hope. Where hope, life … and beauty and joy and the thankfulness of being alive!