Beauty born from pain

In July of this year as a family we visited the state that I grew up in the capital of Australia, Canberra. It was winter time and Canberra can get very cold. While my eldest children were doing their own thing my husband and I and our eight year old decided to go for a visit to the Art Gallery.

The most memorable moment of that day was walking on the frosted grass outside and seeing this little yellow flower all by itself. I had to take a photo as it reminded me about not forgetting  the simple moments in life. Everything that we can take for granted on an average day. It also reminded me of how far I have come as a person. That even through all of the ugliness experienced there are areas within me that have changed that I would never want to give away. Those are the areas involving the heart.

Pain and hurt is never ever pleasant yet somehow it works within us something so much more valuable and everlasting. How we deal with the pain and hurt sets us up either for freedom or bondage. As a child I lived in bondage. Poor self esteem ruled my life every single day. The more I rehearsed the negative thoughts that were playing in my head the more I believed them which inevitably was reflected to others with my body language.

Everything within me desired to be free!!!!

I envied others who were comfortable with being themselves. It would not take much to trigger me into a corner of self defeat and hopelessness. Every negative remark spoken about me at school for instance would be welcomed in without a second thought. I truly believed that I was worth nothing and everyone hated me however, the hate that I felt was actually my own hate towards myself. We are all potential targets for insults and sometimes kids in school say things that are mean and wrong.

We can not control peoples behavior but we certainly have the ability to do a check up of our own hearts and deal with the hurt and pain in a healthy way that will benefit in the long term. When we don’t deal with issues of the heart the clutter just keeps growing and before you know it you are not the person you were created to be.