ONE DAY I RECEIVED A CALL from a woman who was paralyzed. She had overcome cancer only to be faced with a debilitating illness that forced her to life in a wheelchair. She was barely able to dress herself. She told me that life was a daily challenge, but that she took the things that happened to her as a signal to go deeper and to understand more the blessings that were in her life. It wasn't that she didn't experience moments of despair... she did. But she realized that there was meaning to her life, and that she must find the gift within the pain. She works now with others who are facing health challenges to inspire them.

When I got off the phone I looked at my own life, and thought about how many of us agonize over trivia. We make huge crises out of things that for this woman or for someone facing real distress are merely annoyances. We often lose sight of our lives as a blessing. Yet they are. And in our rush to have everything be perfect and right, we hold a rigid line between ourselves and anything that threatens our concept of that perfection. It is the Cinderella story playing itself again and again in our psyches - that somehow if we do everything the way we "should" - life will give us a prince or princess or whatever else we see as the ultimate fantasy goal, and then we will live happily ever after.

We are told through all religious precepts that life is a reflection: As Above, So Below, and this can also be looked at from a perspective of As Within, So Without, or visa versa. We live in a self-reflecting universe, and as seasons come and go and return again, so does life bring us a little summer, a touch of autumn, good and bad winters, and the blessed renewal of spring. We learn that life goes around, not straight ahead.

Life Lessons and Liberation
In addition to the woman who called and shared the story of her paralysis, I was contacted by two other people who were struggling with life threatening diseases. So, as is my habit, I thought about what the message was for me in my own life.

It dawned on me that many of us continuously try to change the script we are assigned, and although in some cases that is an important step, in other cases, there is a lesson to be learned from what we are given.

In my own case, I noted how responsibility for others dogged me throughout my life. Every time I thought I would be able to escape it, something happened to bring me right back into the fold. A script appeared to be playing itself out again and again, and finally I sensed a need to learn to become gracious around it. It was merely a part I agreed to play, not a definition of who I was. In recognizing my resentment at having to take care of and provide for others since childhood, I realized that in the working of the script I was given there was seemingly a choice to either give care to others in need or to be the one who needed care. That realization shifted my whole perception and helped me to feel gratitude for the opportunity to serve. It was a gift, not a curse.

We spend so much time trying to avoid the lessons we are handed. We try to change the assignment so that life looks more the way we would like it to look. And who amongst us would voluntarily sign up for hardship, illness, or other character building scenarios? It is our nature as humans to struggle against a Will outside our own. It is our desire to be in control of our destiny. Yet, part of that destiny is pre-ordained. We come in with a particular genetic package. We come in with a body type and gender, and we have affinities to some things and no interest in others. We are honed further by life through our cultural heritage, and where and to whom we are born.

So much more goes into our lives than what we think and do, although our free will can indeed make a difference in our outlook and what we believe we can accomplish. But - and this is a hard one to digest - there are certain themes that play over and over in our lives. The more we run from them, the more they come in various increasingly difficult forms to make their presence known until we welcome them as important companions.

Once we accept a lesson - not bitterly, or as a defeatist or victim - but with the understanding that something in that particular scenario is for our betterment, life adjusts the intensity, and we are freed of what otherwise is a lifelong burden. So with all the talk of setting ourselves free, it is important to differentiate between things that we need to liberate ourselves from as a life lesson and those things that we are running from in avoidance of a life lesson. Only time and events will fully provide the clues as to what is what. In the meantime, we move back into a framework of "Thy Will Be Done," and observe as our own will attempts to usurp control and take the easy route again and again.

In our journey, we all want the "best" life has to offer, but sometimes what is for our greatest growth goes way beyond our comprehension of what that might be. The struggle to maintain a rigid ideal of what the "best" is can be limiting to our potential. We need to open ourselves to allowing life to be the teacher, and to follow its lead as open-minded students. What we are given is always an opportunity for growth that is the most important kind...that of our soul.

Points to Ponder

Where do you feel the presence of a repetitive scenario operating in your life that is difficult?

• Do you get angry or try to avoid it?
• Do you blame yourself for it and feel guilty?
• Do you succumb to it, but feel resentful?

Take the repetitive issue that keeps cropping up in your life and turn it around.

© Kathleen Jacoby, 2008

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 
Kathleen Jacoby is a writer, author, and numerologist, who has been a contributor to PLW since its beginning. Seasons of the Soul is also a quarterly print edition newsletter published since 1996, and can be purchased for yourself or as a gift at a cost of $12 per year. Contact Kathleen for more information at: KathleenEJacoby@aol.com.

You can also read Kathleen’s BLOG: www.kathleenjacoby.blogs.com.