Joy Comes from Being With What Is

Have you ever had one of those times when life seems to be a rough and tumble sport? My life feels like that right now. A very close family member was just diagnosed with cancer and another is sinking into a deep depression. My oldest friend’s husband is dealing with Alzheimer’s and two of my dear neighbor’s children are dealing with very difficult health challenges.

How do we keep opening to what life is offering when it is so very challenging?

The first thing is to know that life will always open and close. It will bring us nourishing connections with ourselves, our loved ones and with life and, just as winter is a necessary part of the flow of nature, life will also bring us wild winter storms and freezing cold days. It takes a while before we realize that to spend our lives trying to get to the good stuff and to get rid of what we think is bad causes us to be blindsided when the challenges do come.

It is a huge step in our awakening when we realize that challenges aren’t here because we took a left turn when we should have taken a right; or we are being punished by God; or they are proof that there is something wrong with us. They are here to heal us to our core. Or, as I say in my book What’s in the Way IS the Way, “Life is set up, to bring up, what has been bound up, so it can open up, to be freed up, so you can show up for life.

When you discover that the challenges of your life are for you, something amazing begins to happen – you see that they always come bearing gifts. As you discover how bring your aware heart to all the parts of you that resist challenges, the gifts begin to reveal themselves.

All of what I have said is brought together in Rashani’s beloved poem:

There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole, while learning to sing.

I have kept this poem close during this time and these words have allowed me to meet the fragile parts within me that can still be amazed that life includes pain and death. They also remind me to meet my aching heart with my own heart. And most importantly, they remind me that even though suffering, resistance, and shatteredness are here, this is all happening in a greater space. It is the space in which all of our challenges are taking us – the place where we rediscover ‘how to sing’ – not only when life is wonderful, but also when it is very challenging. For, as I love to say, “Happiness is getting what you want – and that can happen at times in life – but joy is the ability to be with what is, even if it rocks you to your core!”

Be Light, Mary