Seeing Beyond

 

     I spent the weekend in my hometown in eastern Arizona, where the wild fires took place earlier this summer. A part of me really didn’t want to see the devastation, because to me this has always been the prettiest part of Arizona. I couldn’t imagine what it would look like after the fires. The last thing that I expected was to keep catching myself thinking how it was one of the prettiest summers I had seen there in a while. There was of course the driving around a corner, looking up at a burned mountain and thinking “wow” because no other words seemed to properly describe the destruction. Those moments of being lost in the destruction were always quickly replaced by the beauty of the greenest grass I had ever seen and the fields full of wildflowers. It blew my mind how much beauty there was just beyond or right in front of all the pain.

 
 
 

     I find myself always in gratitude for the chance in life to be able to see things in a different way than I used to. I have no doubt that only a few years ago I would have only seen the bad, because it would have never even occurred to me to look for the good. I can’t imagine now what it would be like to live and never have this kind of “sight”, I also can’t imagine all of the things I missed, back before I could see.

 

     Such is life…

     It’s not just in the outer world, but when bad things happen to us personally somewhere hidden in all the pain is a gift. Out of our worst moments, our best days are born, if we are willing to see them. No matter how much hurt, pain, guilt, shame or blame we pile on our shoulders for all of the “mistakes” we have made in our life, deep down the beauty of who we really are can never be destroyed. Just like the true beauty of the landscape is still there just beyond what was burned.

     My wish for you today is to be able to see. To be able to see the beauty in something where you once could only see pain. Sometimes it can be hard to see and it always takes courage to go looking.  It takes courage because to see what lies beyond something, the first thing we have to do is be willing to look directly at it. To face our fears, step inside them and realize that today’s bad day is tomorrow’s wild flower patch just waiting for you to have the courage to stand in the rain.