Grief Can Open Your Eyes and Your Heart

While grief can be confining and close you off from the world for a while, it can also be quite enlightening to many things in this life. Some that you didn't want to experience or think about at all and wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Having to sign a non resuscitate order for my one day old daughter would be at the top of my list. Horrifying as this was, it definitely opened my eyes to what is important in this life and what should and shouldn't matter. I have never been one to say one thing and act another way when no one was looking, but I learned to say what you mean and mean what you say. If you love someone tell them, if something is bothering you say so, if you are scared admit it, if you can change something do it and if you can't change something don't dwell on it. It has also opened my heart to people and situations I would have avoided before. Although I haven't gotten to one of the best parts of our story, most of you know about the adoption of our twin girls the same year that we lost our second daughter. Twins born with cocaine in their system to a mother that had been incarcerated for the majority of the pregnancy would have had most people running the opposite direction, but I had lost two very sick little girls and wanted nothing more than to care for those twins...sick or not. It was the grief that opened my heart to be able to let them in however, I know that now. I wouldn't be the person I am today and in the position to be of some real help to others without my grief. You can't teach this in any school, learn it from any book or absorb it from any online search engine. It comes from my soul, is intertwined in every muscle fiber and can never be stripped from me. I am not saying that this is what I had planned or wanted, but I wouldn't change it. It has given me strength, given me courage I didn't know I had, brought me closer to my husband and family and blessed me with three of the most beautiful children. If you can climb out of the rubble and blow all the ashes out, you will be better than you were before. You will embrace your grief and one of these days be thankful for your experiences. Use them to grow and help others find their purpose, because we all have one. Some of us have to endure a little more pain than others, but that is ok. I realize that God must have a great deal of faith in ME and he deserves to have that faith returned. He moves in me to be able to inspire you.