Life Lessons

Sometimes thinking about your life and sorting out what you have learned is important.  It's like you get to a point where to go back is impossible, but yet, to go forward is very scary.  At times you just have to breathe and trust your instincts to help guide you to the places that you need to be.  After all, life is too short to not follow your own heart.


Every day that we wake up we are given the gift of life.  And even though it can be painful and it can be terrifying, in the end it was worth whatever we had to go through.  Could it have been something that was needed to understand another person's point of view?  Or what if we just needed to learn something from that experience to make us a better person?  Can such trials bring joy after the hurt has healed?  Are our mistakes just life lessons to make us better people?

I suppose the joy that comes after the healing is our way of saying, "Ok.  I made it through that and it wasn't so bad after all.  I am still standing on my two feet and alive."  But what about when the joy is gone?  When the joy of giving starts to feel more like a burden?  Most people will tell you that is when you're suppose to stop.  But if you're anything like me, you keep going.  You give until it hurts, and then you give a little more.

I don't have all the answers.  I am who I am because of what I have been through in my past.  I made choices along the way that brought me some of the happiest times in my life and some that brought the worst times in my life.  But I'm standing.  Maybe not as tall as I would like.  But it's better than feeling like your at the bottom of the ocean struggling to find the surface for air.

If there is anything else that I have learned it is that we all have to find our own answers, our own truths, our own happiness, our own redemption.  And if you asked me what life has taught me, not what is hasn't, this is what I would say....


1) Love has nothing to do with looks, but everything to do with time, trust, and interest.
2) Greed will bury even the lucky eventually
3) Bad things do happen to good people
4) Uncertainty is caused by a lack of knowledge.  Hesitation is the product of fear.
5) Time heals all wounds - regardless of how you feel right now
6) Most of the time what you are looking for is right in front of you
7) People deserve a second chance
8) Carelessness is the root of failure
9) Stepping outside of your comfort zone will put things into perspective from an angle you can't grasp now
10) Ignoring the obvious is like walking with your back towards the enemy
11) Taking ownership of failure builds the foundation for success
12) If you never act then you'll never know for sure

"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings, but to find the meanings underlying them."

~Stanley Lindquist~