Happy

I've been meaning to come here to write something for over a day now, as it never feels right to me to leave this space silent for too long.  Every idea that's formed in my mind as a possible subject, though, has been dismissed almost as quickly as it appeared;  my brain hasn't seemed very interested in thinking any of those ideas through or searching frantically for the right words to express them before they vanished into thin air.  This is a strange thing for me because my mind always seems to want to think and search and plan and figure and make itself heard, even if it's only on little pieces of paper with random half-sentences scribbled on them, waiting to be woven into something bigger.  I'm realizing suddenly that this is what is must feel like to let go and relax.  I like it.

This summer has been a truly wonderful one for me so far.  I have been healthy, and happy, and enjoying almost every moment I've been spending with my boys and the family and friends with whom we've had the chance to visit.  I think back to last summer, when I was sick, and exhausted, and completely overwhelmed with anxiety, and I am so grateful for the difference, for the changing seasons and the passage of time that allow situations and people to move on and become something else.  I'm grateful not in the sense of simply thinking, "Thank goodness I'm not there anymore", but in a deeper sense of realizing how much work I've put into getting myself to a different place over the past year (and how much help I've had along the way), how much better I now understand myself, how much I feel I've grown.  I've come to realize that while we can't always control what happens to us, it is up to us to choose how we react to our experiences; those choices can make all the difference.

This summer I am surrounded by sunshine, partly because sometimes time does heal wounds, but also because my experiences last summer, and my eventual decision to learn how to let go of my fears and try and live more in the moment, have made me stronger and wiser.  They've made me more able to accept difficulty and change as things that are okay to welcome in life, because they can lead us to find beautiful places we never knew existed.  In hindsight, I'm somehow glad for the gray skies of last July and all the struggles in the months that followed; they have allowed this summer's skies to reflect an exquisitely lovely shade of blue.