Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs. Like a literal roller coaster, it is balanced, and it always ends exactly where it begins: from ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. The total amount you go up is equal to the total amount you go down, and vice versa. Having grace under fire, and an attitude of gratitude, are somewhat moot if not impossible on the ups and highs. How can you have grace under fire if there is no fire?
It's when we fall that we get the opportunity to shine most.
Sometimes those falls are metaphorical. And sometimes they are out of your hot tub at your birthday party.
I am grateful for any and all scars, from that and otherwise, both literal and figurative. They remind me daily that the fire that burns me is my saving grace, that the challenges of life are opportunity itself. To say that without challenge there is no opportunity at all is an understatement because it falsely implies that challenge and opportunity are two different things.
If we wish to swim, we need the water that might otherwise drown us. Those are the waters and deep seas of fear, pain, and loss--of discomfort, temptation, and challenge. Transcendence is not elimination. Transcendence (learning to swim) is not about getting rid of the dark cold scary water, but rather quite the opposite. I love to swim, and I am grateful for those waters, grateful to be challenged by life and the fallible humanity of this human body, like a good boxing match to be often hit by pain and discomfort, sometimes by own human fist, to get knocked down and thereby be given the chance to get back up. To have the choice to cave to temptation, and not to do it. To have the choice to quit, and not do it. To shine in the dark, I am grateful for it, grateful for the dark.
