Lessons from Nothing

INNER PEACE IS THE NEW success

I have been repeating this mantra-of-sorts to myself and my circle for the past few weeks. It is meant to imply that inner peace rather than money is the true measure of success. Right about now, it is not aspiration, but it truly something I have come to internalize, though it came through trial by fire. 

Right now, at this very moment my checking account is overdrawn, my savings have been depleted, I do not have a job prospect and the past few days this week have been trying as I sat in doubt of myself and my potential. Maybe, I thought for longer than I care to admit, I am not as special as I always believed I was. And if I am, how come other people can't see it. But those are lies. Lies my depression tells to keep me in isolation and out of the sunshine. The truth is, I am even more talented, beautiful, compassionate and loving than I give myself credit for. The truth is, despite my lack of income or capital resources, my value is beyond measure. The truth is, I had to teach myself how to believe that. 

I talk to my friend Emma a lot about my struggle with money, how it is my biggest trigger and all the feelings that get stirred up when I am in deficit. But the truth is, I have been equally uncomfortable with money even when it is in surplus. What I believe I needed to learn was that though money may come and go, it does not and cannot change the W O R T H of my being. 

Yesterday I woke up and the book of Ecclesiastes was on my mind. I read the words: 

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will revere him.

It started to turn the tide of my mood immediately. So, i spent much of my day in silent prayer and ended last night listening as I was prayed over. I am always searching for the lesson. What is it that I am supposed to be learning from this moment? There have been many things I have learned in the process of losing everything I thought I needed including one of my best friends. Everything that has gone, I have to trust was taken to reveal to me my own strength. My own strength and my own value. Sometimes you have to lose everything before you learn the value of things. 

Spending my birthday with one of my very best friends, he and I barely had two nickels to rub together. Still, we pooled our extremely limited resources and we had an amazing visit filled with love and laughter. We later joked that there will come a time in our future when we look back and laugh at how we made EVERYTHING from nothing. My mother taught me a long time ago that money is not so difficult to give for people who have it to offer. She immediately deflated some of the bravado out of receiving lavish gifts. She also taught me that not all giving is done from the heart. I remember her warnings as I stumble through life and learn the hard way that she is always right, particularly and especially when it comes to understanding people. 

What she left me with, and what I am now coming to hold as a supreme truth is that the people with whom you give and receive unconditional love, your family? They are what matters. And from them, there is no need to be anything but who you are. You do not need to be or have anything but your self. They ask nothing from you, often, but your time, care and support. They fill you when you are running low, and they share with you without recognition of a deficit. Yet, because of your love, you know that there is never truly a debt owed between you, it will and does always come back around. 

It has made me unafraid to tell my truth. Because my circumstances, though undesirable, are not who I am. They are the consequence of my actions when I had forgotten. And now because I know better, I will do better and I will thrive keeping close that which is important and letting the rest fall like rain.