Go through to get to, we aren’t meant to stay in the valley.  I heard this the other day and it clicked.  I’ve felt like I had no choice in so many instances in my life and I wallowed exactly where I was instead of learning to take the lesson and move on.  How often do we do this?  The choice to repeat the pattern in hopes that something new will come of it is a fear response and it keeps us exactly where we are.  Regardless of the reason, staying where we are is a choice.  If we want to get to the other side, we need to get through it.  We aren’t meant to stay in the thick of the fight, the fear, the pain, the pressure, the sadness.  We always have the option to get to the other side.  Many of us don’t want to admit that we are addicted to the fight.  We are accustomed to living in stress and we wear it like a badge as if that is some determining factor of worth.  Our struggles can teach us or define us and many of us choose to have it define us, like we have to approach every situation like it’s a fight.  If we let it teach us, we can say thank you and move on. We move through.

I understand that part of the fear of getting through is that we aren’t always sure of what’s on the other side.  There are no guarantees.  What if we aren’t prepared for it?  What if it’s more than we can handle?  The thing is, there are other options if we start retraining our thought process to process these events differently.  What if the other side is more beautiful than we can imagine?  What if the valley was just a stepping stone to show us where we really want to go?  Suddenly we open to the possibility that there is magic on the other side.  We become capable of anything on the other side even if we aren’t sure what comes our way.  Simply believing that we can makes it so—or at the very least sets us up to have the capacity to make it so. 

The choice is always ours.  We aren’t meant to stay stuck.  We are meant to move beyond the limits we set in our mind, the fears we inherit from family and society at large.  We are meant to get out of the valley.  We were never told we have to stay there.  We were simply told to walk through.  Take the lesson and move on.  There may be other valleys but those aren’t our home either.  Our home is in the movement and ability to flex our beliefs including our beliefs in our ability.  Our home is in the faith that no matter where we land we are able to make something of it.  Getting through means trusting our own wings and applying what we know.  Getting through means making the choice do so something differently, to choose again.  We aren’t meant to be miserable.  We are meant to live in love and joy so when we face challenging times, know that we have to continue to move forward.  Move forward with appreciation for what is, safe in the knowing that all is well on the other side.