“Resilient people are said to be like bamboo in a hurricane – they bend but they do not break.”
I was scrolling my company’s website yesterday and stumbled upon a link about resilience in the learning tools section. I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately…what does it mean to be resilient? Am I resilient?
Sometimes we just have those days where everything feels wrong don’t we? We feel alone, isolated, scared and even depressed. We sweat the small stuff and let it get the best of us. Sometimes we go through entire seasons where life just seems to be on a downward spiral. These seasons however are when we can potentially grow the most.
I have been through periods of my life where I thought I might not ever feel hopeful again. I struggled a lot after my mom died in 2003. I was devastated because I lost my best friend. It happened so quickly and I had no time to prepare. There was a huge hole in my heart. I remember sitting at my parents house after her funeral with a house full of people. Everyone was eating and talking and enjoying each others company but I was just sitting there with tears flowing and feeling so unbelievably alone. And even weeks and months afterwards still feeling the loss, I wondered how everyone else could just go about their daily lives like nothing happened. Going on 12 years later I still feel it, but with time the sadness has subsided and I remember the happy memories the most.
I struggled in a similar way after my two ex husbands walked out on me. Divorce can feel like death. The loss of any important relationship can for that matter. Each time I was left there alone and felt like a complete and utter failure. I vowed to be with each of them for the rest of my life and I truly meant it. But things do not always go the way we plan. God has a plan beyond our control. And His plan is always greater than our plan. What we think we want the most might just be a stepping stone to something we never even imagined possible. I am glad I finally realize this. It is like a gift. My faith in God is what gets me through.
I am inspired by a movie I saw on New Year’s Eve called “Unbroken”…a true story of resilience. If you haven’t seen this movie it is definitely worth the $9.50! It is a story about a boy who doesn’t realize his worth and was headed down a dark path but with encouragement, he overcame those negative feelings and went on to become an olympic runner. After being on top of the world, the world came crashing down on him. He survived a near fatal plane crash in WWII. He survived being caught at sea in a raft for 47 days. And he survived being tortured in a Japanese prison camp for nearly 2 years. Any of those horrific experiences could have defeated him but he knew his worth and his resilience kept him alive. He was bent but not broken.
I have those difficult days and those difficult seasons but I also have days and seasons where I feel so alive and feel like I can face anything. I imagine myself to be like Linda Hamilton’s character in Terminator 1 where she drove off in her Jeep into the sunset at the end of the movie ready to conquer the world! She had been through hell. But she was BAD ASS! She was bent but not broken.
Someone told me a long time ago that when you drive under a train bridge and a train is passing overhead at the moment you drive under it that you are supposed to make a wish. (Yes, this is a silly ritual! Kind of like yelling “SLUG BUG” and hitting the person next to you in the car when you see a Volkswagen Beetle ;)). For those of you who are reading this and know where I live you know I have made a million wishes because we have trains galore here! These wishes are kind of like what I like to call “Santa Claus Prayers.” I have never told anyone about my train bridge wishes but my most common one is that “I wish for everything to just be okay.” And you know what? Everything is always okay in the end.
Keep forging on no matter what life throws at you. God gives His toughest battles to His strongest warriors.
Sometimes we are bent but we are not broken.
Stacey ~ iamalive41