Finding Strength when Life Goes On

We do not heal immediately because time has passed. Sometimes we needs days. Sometimes we need months. Sometimes we need years. Most importantly, though, we need each other.

I was not ready to fall in love with Gumbo.  If you will bear with me for a moment, I am going somewhere with this analogy.  Gumbo is our current dog, but my first dog…her name was B.  I LOVED B, and out of nowhere she died, and before I had a chance to heal, my husband thrust me to SPCA.  We adopted Gumbo, and for years, I treated him as though he did not belong in my family.  I was not ready to fall in love with Gumbo.

We live in a world where life goes on, even when I need time to compose myself.  When I need time to get my thoughts together and to recover, life just keeps going.  I do not heal properly so my scars begin to show, and time continues to eat away at life.

Some people think I am so strong.  Really, I have no other options but to keep going because life…keeps going.  What else can I do?  I need those people to understand that I am not strong.  I am just living.  I am staring at skeletons swept into closets because life went terribly wrong, and before I could get a grip, time refused to stop…and in walked Gumbo…way before I was ready.  There he was – a living, breathing symbol of life itself.

Therefore, I refused to love him because I was in no position to offer anything more than the bare minimum he needed to survive.  Because, what about B?  I had no room left for love so I shut him out before he even had a chance…

How often do we do the same with situations much nearer and dearer to the heart than dogs named Gumbo?  How often does life go on when we would prefer to sit and process and marinate?  How often do people see strength when all we feel is weakness and all we see are skeletons where there used to be life and love?  How often do we need more time to heal and grow and life just continues without our permission…when we could use a moment and life will hear nothing of it?

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Thus, I stare at skeletons.  I take tests and re-tests.  I master no solution situations.  Yet, I am no closer to any resolutions…The skeletons are still there…The tests are still there…The emotions are still there…I AM STILL BROKEN!!

After all this time…all these blogs…all these conversations…all this prayer.  How can I still be broken?

Then I hear Him, “I just need you to love Gumbo.  Per usual, you have this whole thing backwards.  You felt like you needed time to heal so that you could move on.  Then you could love Gumbo.  Instead, you must love Gumbo so that you can move on.  Then you will heal.”

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When life gives you lemons...make lemonade

Someone, somewhere needs to know that.  You do not just wake up one morning completely healed.  Sometimes life cuts you a break.  Life sends you something…or someone.  Sometimes she’s 3.  Sometimes he’s 6…Sometimes he’s 5…or maybe 35.  Sometimes she’s 35…or 32…or 20.  Sometimes she’s 60.  Sometimes he’s 64.

Sometimes the smallest things help us cope when life wants us to dwell in the past.
Mya as Cinderella sporting her school uniform as “hair” with a pink headband

When life cuts you that break, you take it.  You take it, and you run because that break is everything you need to survive.

I am not strong.  I am not, “over it.”  I am living life because, unfortunately, life just keeps going.  Some days smiles are easy.  Other day, smiles take every bit of energy I have.

BUT, thank God for wrong answers. Thank God I got the process backwards.  Thank God that one day, I woke up…and I fell in love with Gumbo

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What are some ways that you continue to find strength in situations you feel like you should already be “over?”

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Sometimes strength comes from unexpected places.

19 thoughts on “Finding Strength when Life Goes On”

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  1. Hello Brittany, I tend to look at wounds as having layers. The deeper the hurt the more layers and when I’ve thought that I was “over” that hurt and then find out, I’m not, I’ve come to see it now, as only some of those layers healed and that there’s still deeper healing in the works

    I love what you said about loving first in order to heal. I know I have felt at times that I need time to heal from a hurt and so withhold love thinking I will love…later, when it’s more comfortable to do so 🙂

    After reading your post, I don’t think time can heal better then the act of letting ourselves love another, perhaps likened to a river that we allow to run through us. Thank you for your post, what wonderful things to ponder!

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    2. Yes we heal in layers. As we heal we keep on shedding the hurt and the past and we keep on moving on. Healing takes time, But a big but, ultimately it is love that heals us. Yes loving another also heals in a way, but it is when someone loves us unconditionally that we are able to cover those wounds and heal completely. What I believe is, until love finds us if we can love and care for others, then some kind of love will be blessed upon us in time. I send you many Blessings of Love, Light and Healing Energies your way 🙂 ❤

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  2. Brittany-

    I’ve been reading your posts as they’ve come through my email. Girl, you are the definition of strong, whether you feel like it or not. This post (like so many of your other recent ones) brought tears to my eyes. Much love to you, Brittany!

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    1. Thanks so much Cassie! I actually read this a few days ago, and I didn’t know how to respond. I LOVE reading your blogs so to know that you subscribe and read and follow what I’m doing…means so much to me. Much love to you XOXOXO

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  3. Oh goodness, Brittany! Your words touch places in my heart I’ll really rather not deal with. Yes, girl, I have a Gumbo or two in my life. I think you know it and that’s why we connect so well. But we keep getting up (most days) and braving the day because life goes on. But most of all because it’s only in our weakness that God is strong.
    Love you, friend!
    Marva | SunSparkleShine

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  7. I wonder sometimes why I am still not healed from hurts from long ago. I like what Marva said; it’s in our weakness that God is strong for us. Too often when we are whole, we think that we have it under control and forget God, or at least put Him as secondary, as co-pilot, while we attempt to be the pilot of our own lives. The brokenness remains, I think, as a memorial to our proud hearts, that we need Him, that He is there for us, that He sees us and cares about us, and that we WANT Him to do so. We find we have to look to Him for survival, which we should have been doing all along, and in doing so, we truly meet Him, truly find Him, truly begin to absorb the idea that He delights in us and loves us tenderly, and truly begin to love Him in return and worship Him in spirit and in truth. John 4:23b,24
    Love and prayers.

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  8. Keep going girl. I know it is hard, my prayers are with you. All things that God does is for the good for us, although we do not see it that way at that time. Your son, her son would have been safe with you and had a future with you. But she decided to take him to a life which was not stable and not safe either. Which was not the best thing for the little boy. Usually God sees what is best and there is divine intervention at certain situations. We always have to act responsibly when it comes to young lives.
    Yes what you heard was true. We cannot first heal and then love but sometimes giving that love to another in turn heals us. We need to go through all the challenges/tests and tribulation in order to move onto that next level. That is life and theses challenges come to all of us in different ways and sizes and times. And once the storm is over, you will find that you are not the same person who was before you went through the storm, But a stronger more confident and brave person to face the world full on again. Much Love and Light from me 🙂 ❤

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    1. Thanks so much for your love and light and insight. God definitely knows what He is doing on so many levels…levels I have not even seen yet. I am truly grateful to Him for that. I am NOT the same person as you said. I’m different. He’s different. Like the aftershock of a crazy storm, when the rebuilding begins, and life starts to find its new normal. XOXO

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