Sometimes life really tosses us around. We are thrown up into the air. Spinning with no ground to stand on, everything around is suddenly unfamiliar, nothing makes sense. Caught in a whirlwind, we can’t grasp anything we see.  Everything is moving too fast.  We  realize we can’t find a way out.  Because there is no way out.  Only a way through.  And then we have to make choice.

Our hearts are laid open and in these moments we must decide if we can keep them open despite the pain. Or do we close them off because feeling the love hurts too much? Do we harden ourselves to the world and all its heartache or should we own our pain and, with it, our love, trusting time will forgive and heal? It is only through love, I think, that we ever truly live. And so here, in the midst of deep sorrow, we must choose to bend or to break .

Love is bigger than this world. Keeping open to the love is the only way left for us and those who are gone from us to make a way through together.  I think the way to accept great loss and tragedy is to stop grasping for the part that is no longer there but instead catch hold of the part that can never, not ever, be taken away.  It isn’t an easy reach.  We have to be willing to stay open, to be vulnerable, to soften our hearts to allow for the stretch.   It takes a small leap of faith because we see nothing to hold in sight.  But something is there.  I assure you it is there forever. We just need to bend.