Life Is Like A Funny Joke

August 4. Life is a funny thing right. This space between birth and death, between heaven and earth. The dash between the date on the tombstone.

This is life. It’s huge and also small.

It’s wide and expansive reaching to the ends of the earth and beyond, and also narrow, limited and restricted.

How can something be all of those things. The joy we experience with the beauty all around us, when we breathe fresh air, feel warm sun on our skin, look our babies in their eyes, snuggle with your puppy, enjoy hot sex in a mutually loving relationship, devour a gorgeous and healthy salad filled with nutrition from the earth. You get the idea.

And the pain that comes from living. The physical pain we endure from playing sports, getting in accidents, growing older. And the emotional pain.

The searing overwhelm that comes from being in relationship with others, from losing people we love, from the disappointments that will come for all of us, from the diagnosis. Its like the sting, sizzle and smoke that comes from banding an animal, it hurts, a lot, and then leaves a big, bulging very obvious scar.

We all have it or we will eventually. If you don’t, we should talk, that might require some clinical work.

It’s the nature of being a human in our world, in this life. Pain is the accepted consequence of walking through life with others. Yet sometimes I think we are surprised by it.

It comes on all hot and fierce and wreaks havoc on our physical bodies and we stand there with the look for shock on our faces asking the universe, why me.  Well, umm that’s the human experience. Why not you.

If you have a Christian world view you know the reason for this. You have likely heard the story of Adam and Eve and their disobedience in the garden of Eden. This is what we point to as the “original sin” and therefore the breaking down of God’s perfect creation affecting all future humans that walk the earth.

This is why there is evil in the world despite God’s ability to stop it all. He allows it because he gave us free will. Way to much to unpack here, send me a message if you want to chat about it.

Maybe you don’t ascribe to any of that.

You have more of a universal view of the world, that everything is energy. And we are all moving through this life together as little balls of energy that affect everything that we come in contact with. This is true, we are all energy.

The power of manifestation shows this time and time again. Even in this energy the discomfort will be present. But scientifically we can change it by using the power of neuroscience.  We have much more power than many of us even want to acknowledge.

This means that in the pain of life that we will all experience we have power. In the darkest of times when you feel powerless, hopeless, unworthy, undesirable you still have power.

You are like an energizer battery that has gotten to the end of its line, there is still a little in there. And if you take it out and lick the ends and put it back, it will generate more energy to power through for just a little longer.

Maybe you know this exact feeling. Most of us who have gotten sober for sure have experienced those feelings more than once in fact that was our everyday experience. And then something or someone came along and recharged your power (licked your battery 😊).

Maybe it was a family member, a friend, a hospital, a police officer, a court or God. Something showed you a glimmer of hope and set things in motion for you to get sober. For me it was all of those things, a perfectly designed plan.

So what are we to do walk along maudlin and sulky like a teenager who didn’t get their way? I mean sometimes yes.

There are times in the pain when we will step in deep. Let the weight of the quicksand pull us down slowly and submit to it. Might even hang out in there for a while.

Those darkest days depression.

I don’t recommend that of course, but it happens. And if that’s where you are I’d encourage you so much to reach out. Send me a message I can point you in the right direction. Find a great therapist, tell someone.

The other options are a bit more tolerable with the right tools. It is astounding what we can endure as humans. If you have ever known a child with a chronic illness or walked alongside someone who tragically looses a loved one, you know the power of the human experience. We cannot do it alone. Not well anyway. Unless you like quicksand.

Other options include things like self-care. And I’m not talking about manicure and massages. Although those are nice and wonderful if we can have them, they aren’t necessary to show care and love toward ourselves.

You can do this with your skin care routine (I share about this in the Sober Freedom Inner Circle). Creating beautiful, predictable daily routines you can count on so even in the rough patches you know you can enjoy your coffee while watching birds and listen to a meditation.

Tools like breathwork, prayer, Epsom salt baths, therapy, friendship, physical activity, coaching, beautiful nourishing food and good coffee. Your might include gardening, playing an instrument, cooking, etc. There is no limit to how you can show yourself care and love.

The only barrier is yourself, when you don’t do it. When your self-talk is negative, when you allow the limiting beliefs you have to keep you from moving forward in your life.

This always the truth. The barrier is myself.

No matter what is going on in this life, most of it is out of our control. But one thing I believe in my depths of my soul is no matter what we still have choices. Choices in how we respond, how we think, what we put in our mouth, where we spend our money, who we allow in our lives.

Check in with your choices. Are they yours or someone else’s? Where are you holding back. Ask yourself these questions, allow the answers to come and notice where you feel it in your body.

This work leads to TRANSFORMATION! This is the way we not just survive in this life, the dash between the yeas, but how we live. How we feel and how we serve. This is life.

XO,

Shelby