Four Years - The Gift of the Other Side

 It's been four years since .... 

Four years... 

Who am I today after four years? How have I grown? What have I done with this gift? 

I don't know the answers to any of those questions, I just know I am here.  I am here. I am here. I am here. I work through the days, I stumble, I make mistakes, I sometimes make good choices... but I am here nonetheless. 

You want me to say I'm grateful, and most of the time I am, but every year around this time I cannot say fully what I am other than just here.  I haven't found the reason why He said "No, not yet", but I believe in one day finding out that answer.  Today, I am here. 

So many other people do not get this chance to simply say they are here and for that I am grateful. 

Today, this week, I am clouded with the grief of knowing how I felt in my same body four years ago... alone, weak, sad, abandoned, shipwrecked, and uncomfortable in my own skin. Isolated. Shameful. Alone. Unworthy. I could go on, but I believe you and I both get the point... it was pretty bleak. And it comes back to me during these days. I feel for the person I was during that time, like what I imagine it is to feel for a child who goes through these things... it hurts, but it doesn't quite hurt the same way. I feel those things in a diluted form because I have been given the gift of the other side. Does the other side give all the answers? Heck no! But the other side gives hope that I didn't have in those days. Today I get to feel those things with a glimmer of hope and peace knowing that there is a reason I am still here.  Days like today I have no earthly idea why in fact I am still here, but I know I am and there must be something to it. 

Recently I was talking with a friend and told him the higher you get in life, in the good, in the vulnerability, in the grandness of life the deeper the pool is at the bottom of the cliff.... which isn't all bad... we must know the risk in the high to appreciate the depth. The depth isn't all bad, for it is where we do the most knowing... it isn't the high that we understand things but in the fall and the plunge where we realize the beauty of the scenery from above, and honestly, sometimes we appreciate the scenery below more too. 

All I know is that I am here, and for that, today .... right now, after a good talk with an old friend, I am grateful. It doesn't always feel that way. But in the midst of the plunge to the depths this week is certain to bring (along with the beautiful goodness in the depths), I am grateful. 

He told me NO four years ago. 

In four years I've seen my niece grow to celebrate her fourth birthday, I've seen the expansion of my family by one double dimpled goober, I've surprised my first niece for her birthday, I've moved to a new state that I am absolutely in love with, I've seen states I've never seen before, I've walked through a global pandemic and two career changes, I've hugged by parents and hugged strangers.... I've lived. I haven't figured it all out, but I have lived. 

He told me NO four years ago and gave me the gift of the other side, He never said it would be easy, but I know and I truly believe, it is for a reason.  Maybe one day I'll know the reason, but until then, I'll keep living in the gift of the other side.