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The Lessons of Love by Melody Beattie
This book helped me to understand why there was so much pain in life.
Here are few passage that would help...
Melody Beattie lost her son who was 12 years old and she was going
through tough times and she says ...
"Since the day my soul and body hit
this planet, life had not been what I expected.
A childhood that had gone on endlessly in the midst of a family in
turmoil and pain. Beginning at age eleven to cross off the days until I
would turn eighteen.
Stumbling around in the dark, grouping my way toward maturity.
A marriage that I thought would be the marriage of my dreams, one that
ended in divorce ten years later.
Years of struggling to overcome poverty and the aloneness, the
overwhelming difficulty of being a low-income single parent.
Three years at the top of the mountain. Three years. Three of the best
years of my life. Finally having a family and a life that worked. Dreams
that came true.
Then falling down the other side of the mountain, losing it, spending
the last years in deep emotional, psychic, mental, and sometimes
physical pain, more pain that I thought any human being could or should
have to live with and through. Having to face the choice of living
without what I wanted most, or not living at all.
It didn't take a mathematical genius to add up these figures. Forty-two
years of hard and painful struggle. Three years of joy, goodness,
fulfillment.
Forty-two years of waiting for three.
Forty-two years of chasing dreams that didn't pan out.
I didn't get it. Not at all. I had spent years learning to look at the
bright side, look at the positive, look at what's right. I'd spent years
convincing myself I was'nt a victim. I was tired of the enormous amount
of energy it took to continually keep convincing myself that this was
good and right.
It did'nt feel right. Or good.
For the most part, life had been a series of disappointments. And the
scale escalated as time went on. I could have what I wanted, but there
would be a catch. Always. I was tired of the hooks, tired of the tricks,
tired of watching life slip through my fingers as soon as I grabbed
it.
My life was one of three things: accidental, incidental, or delibrate.
It did'nt matter which one - each idea enraged me. If it was my fault,
then why hadn't someone told me what I was doing wrong before I did it?
What about the years when I had tried hard to do my best? My best sure
hadn't changed things much either.
The cold war with God turned white hot. I was in the ring with God. I
wanted an explanation. There didn't seem to be one. And, I wondered, how
can you win a war with God?
I struggled and wailed in the depths of my soul until the wee hours of
the morning. Whatever had sprung loose would not be stopped, tucked
away, or eased.
Then in the middle of the night it happened. I knew what happened
because it had happened twice before.
The first time, I was younger, about twenty-six, out of work with on
prospects. I had already answered every ad in the paper, ruling nothing
out.
I was out of money, soon to be out of a home, and out of ideas. I was
standing on the corner waiting for the bus when the angel spoke to
me.
"Turn around", she said.
I did. I was standing in front of a bank. To the left was a doorway
leading to a law firm on the second floor. "Go in and tell the man who
runs the firm you're looking for a job. Tell him you want to work for
him".
This is crazy, I thought. But the voice was so certain, so clear, so
peaceful, I knew it could be trusted. I marched up the stairs and asked
to talk to the attorney in charge. I walked in, stood in front of his
desk, and told him I wanted a job, wanted to work for him.
"What a coincidence", he said after hearing me out. "I've been thinking
I need to add another employee, but I haven't got around to advertising
yet. Fill out an application".
Two weeks later, I started the job.
The second time, only eight years ago, I was again out of money and
food. The children and I were hungry, down to one potato and a can of
green beans. No money due to come in for over a week. I had tried to
hold my head up and not ask for help. But I needed help now.
I drove to the local food bank. I walked up to the door. The sign said
"Will Return Wednesday". It was Monday. I got back in the car, laid my
head on the steering wheel, and cried. I was tired. Tired of the money
struggles. Tired of the poverty. Tired of trying. Tired of trying to
make ends meet that never met, no matter how hard I stretched
them.
Then I heard the voice again, a soft-whisper but sure and calm, telling
me that soon I wouldn't have to worry so about money. Unless I wanted
to.
Instantly I felt comforted, peaceful. I drove home, and we split the
beans and potato among us.
There was no pot of gold on my doorsteps, no winning sweepstakes entry
in the mail. But a year later, the book I was struggling to write at the
time hit the New York Times best-seller list.
Things got better - not because I had money, but because there was peace
in my soul.
Now, in the midst of my angst, I heard the whisper again. The voice was
calm and sure.
After tomorrow, you'll never see your life the same again.
I turned off the light and fell into sleep.
The next morning, my despair began anew, the turmoil picking up where it
left off. I was frozen in my bed, flattened by my anguish.
Then the answer came gently, softly, and as certain as the morning sun,
filling me with light.
Every experience I have had in my life has been about one thing, the
only thing that is.
Love.
I had heard it said before. Now I understood.
The struggles to learn I had a soul. My struggles to learn about my
strengths. Even my grief. I had been talking to a woman seated near me
at dinner one night, wailing about my pain, my anguish over losing my
son, about how close the three of us had been, about the hole in my
heart. The woman had turned to her husband. Have you ever loved that
deeply? she had asked. I don't think so, he had said. Even these, my
blackest and darkest moments, had been a form of love, one of its
lessons. A harder one, but still a lesson of love.
I laughed out loud, alone in my room. What did I think love would look
like? Feel like? Be? A romantic vision of being carried off to Camelot?
And then what?
Forgiveness. Compassion. Service. Self-love. Loving myself when I was
certain nobody else loved me or ever would. Then opening up, learning to
let others in.
Faith.
Acceptance. Acceptance of myself, my life, others, their lives.
Friendship. Courage. Perseverance.
Hope.
Joy. Learning to deliberatly choose joy. The simple sweet process of
learning to be present each moment and find and choose joy, a joy not
dependent on outer circumstances, but one that comes from the heart.
How did I think I would learn all these lessons, all these subcategories
of love?
Trust. Trusting myself. Learning to trust others, life, God.
Learning to play and laugh. Learning to walk away, sometimes learning to
stay put. Honoring my own needs, even when they differed from what
others thought my needs should be. Honoring me, even when I was
different from what others thought I should be. Trusting my vision for my
life, creating another vision if that one didn't work. Chasing my
dreams, catching them, then finding more. Learning about this
connection, this absolute and divine connection to all that is, and
maybe ever was, in the universe.
And finally, facing and accepting death.
Had I thought all those lessons would be learned easily?
I guess I had.
I saw now that even the struggles, the hard times when I cursed and
moaned and whined, had not been punishment. God hadn't been peering down
from the heavens saying, Good, let her crawl over broken glass for a
bit. That will teach her.
God was saying, Look, she's learning to love.
The struggle of climbing to the top of the mountain was as much my
purpose as getting to the top of it.
I felt a lightness that I hadn't felt in years, maybe ever. For a moment
I imagined I heard the angels sing, a celestial chorus of joy. I
wondered how long, how long really, I had struggled to get this lesson
right.
I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to
euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either painful
and terrible or joyous and wonderful.
The simple truth was that life was both.
I hadn't come here to live happily ever after, although I now sensed I
could. I had come here to learn love. That's what the lessons had been
about.
Even those events I had written off as coincidence were an expression of
divine love. Universal love. Love was an active, living force. It had
always been there for me. All I needed to do was open my eyes and see
and choose it.
It's not, I realized, that the lessons are about love. The lessons
themselves are love. They are the journey to the heart.
I got up. And I let go of my balloon, watching it trail far up into the
sky.
Understanding love didn't make the pain go away. Understanding love
freed my heart.
It didn't mean I'd never feel pain again. An open heart feels all it
needs to feel. Otherwise, it closes again.
Thank you for my life, I whispered into the air.
I was surprised. At last I meant it."
I hope this story heals everybody. My heartache has not stopped but this
book was a balm which makes it bearable. I love you all dearly and I
hope I can reach out and touch you all and soothe you everyday.
God loves you; So do I
All things are possible to one who believes
Maintained by:Vasu Rajan
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