WRITING: BECAUSE I KNEW YOU

BECAUSE I KNEW YOU…

“I’ve heard it said, ‘people come into our lives for a reason… bringing something we must learn’. And we are led to those who help us most to grow, if we let them; and we help them in return”… A reason, a season or a lifetime they come into our life and along the way, if we don’t bail when the going gets tough, it is an equal return for them, even if they don’t know it. Usually, this process is not necessarily a comfortable one, unless the cause was joy. Actually, it can be torturous, full of suffering, and sometimes, actual pain. “Because I knew you, I have been changed for …” the better, or the worse.

The circumstances are never the same. Growth can come from a NO, when you wanted to hear YES. Or it can come from people wanting to throw a sickly child over board on a raft from a tortured country aiming to land on freedoms’ shore, but allow the child to finish the beginning of a new life. How can one measure if one seems to be greater than the other, as an adult with the power of decision, and a sick child who is at their mercy. Surely the NO and the decision to shelter the child anyway, altered all the lives involved in those decisions and the lives touched by those individuals in years to come.

We are who we are today because of every single choice made by every single individual that crossed our paths from the time we took our first breath, until the last one you just took, just now! And who of you can say that we were changed for the better or worse? We all can. It takes some contemplation. It requires introspection, reflection. Our day is so filled with tripping through the stops and starts, like stepping on the gas pedal a bit in anticipation of the red light turning green… so filled with ‘what’s next on our agenda’, that we totally lose sight of the causes of how we got to be who we have become. Those we cursed and blamed the most were responsible for the greatest transformations in our soul, caused us to burn in flames and rise up like a phoenix. Some of us are still dusting off the ashes.

Further reflection may uncover the most difficult times of suffering, the vast emotional breakdowns traversed, sticking-to-it, that led us to enormous breakthroughs on the other side: The times we cried with someone, feeling their pain, or the tears of our own, pouring unceasingly like a faucet. Perhaps they were tears of joy in recognizing how beautiful a butterfly is, or how blessed you were to be living and breathing in that very instant. You can’t get more in the NOW moment than that.

Most often, the ‘other’ could be your cat having a conversation with you, or an instantaneous communication with someone you were estranged from for reasons you forgot… people you may never meet again in this lifetime… the way our stories end never negates the hand print on your heart, some seared with heat, others embedded through joy.

Your assignment, should you accept it, is to write down five people who impacted your life, how you were altered during that process of passing through the breakdown to the breakthrough on the other side, and the changes you remembered afterwards. How were your choices different from those you made before the encounter? Did you smile at the thought? What residue is still attached to their imprint on your heart? How did they help you re-write your life, are you still blaming or forgiving them, what exactly are you carrying around all these years later?

Perhaps it’s time to recall, ponder and be thankful you survived whatever it was. This clearing paves your pathway into the future. Can you find it in you to clear the air, energetically ask for their forgiveness for what they blame you for? You do realize…. it’s about YOU, not them.

Who was a reason? Who was a season? And who was a lifetime? It may surprise you. Sometimes the ‘reason’ is most impactful. “Because I knew you, I have been changed for good”.