Knowing You are Strong!

Knowing your own strength

I love the new song by Whiney Houstan I Didn’t know my own strength. The whole album seems to touch upon a theme of redemption/ of crawling with all your might back to the shores of sanity. Who among us has not known that feeling? I have had low points and I know that each of our low points is that which are specific to us. It’s when all the challenges are in our face and it’s about you!!! (Finger in your face and whatta you gonn do about it)kind of feeling.

For me when Abby died I felt like I lost! Beaten! I was so hurt ~ to a point that would not be healed through the ways that had worked before. I remember I went to a herbologist because it felt like there was something in my body or in my blood that could make me very sick. Has anyone ever felt like that before? I pray I never feel that way again but I am more attuned to the fact that all kinds of feelings exist and there is no defense save prayer.

Anyway these feelings of defeat and despair hung around for a few years. In 1998 I applied for an opportunity to go to India with a Philanthropic Organization called the Prasad Project that provided cataract surgery to Maharashtra and the neighboring villagers of the Tanga Valley in India. These people would otherwise be blind and at that time in that part of the world blindness is a death sentence. They accepted me I spent a few weeks there and got way more than I gave. I was terrified not knowing any one. I found that I was stronger than I thought. The smiles, the gratitude in the face of such need and poverty…filled my heart.

Here are a few pictures. Not everyone can pack up and go to India. I believe that was God helping me out because I was so broken. So I guess my advice is finding your smile again. God is really our strength. We cannot do it on our own but take one step do the one thing He will do so much in response. Be an instrument of Love even in the face of all that is not that and SMILE!