Dear Mom e-Letter

Volume 2, Issue 9
The Good & The Bad
August 2007

Life is an amazing journey of wonderful days filled with bright sunshine, the giggling voices of small children playing in sandboxes, and joyful celebrations of friends and family gathered for events like weddings and birthdays.

Life is also a journey of sad days filled with anguish that become evenings filled with doubt, when you wonder if the sun will again ever shine.  Days when you can’t even hear the voices of small children because your pain is so great, and people gather to support you. 

I know both kinds of journeys in life, as do you.  The good and the bad are both part of life. 

“Life is an amazing journey” has been the opening line of my inspirational presentations for nearly a decade.  I believe one of the biggest blessings we can ever acquire is the ability to balance the good and the bad so that we live in the place of joy, regardless of what the journey brings us.  I’ve learned some lessons that have helped me balance life to make the journey great.

First, I’ve learned to simply see it that way.  Life is an amazing journey when simple things delight your soul. Dew drops sparkling in morning sunshine on tops of thousands of blades of grass.  Robins fighting over worms after the first rainfall in more than a month.  Clouds shaped like characters in Gavin’s Scooby Doo cartoons.  And the moon, whatever size, big, small, white or orange.  Doesn’t matter!  It’s always the moon.

My life’s motto is “Keep the pleasures of life simple.” It levels the playing field.  No one can charge me for looking at the clouds, the moon, birds or my grass. It’s simply up to me to enjoy, love and then protect.  Mom and Dad instilled a love for nature that continues to grow.  The older I get, the more I value and become restored by nature.

Second, I’ve learned that the journey has both good days and bad.  The secret for me has been to learning balance and to believe that good would always come from the bad.

I learned that by writing letters to a mother to whom I never got to say goodbye.

That was, and remains, the single hardest thing I’ve faced in my life.  If I can find the good even in that journey, then I am free to find the good in everything else. 

What are your lessons in balancing the good and the bad in life?  How do you balance the good and bad?   Have you gotten to a place where you eventually find blessings in dark nights that were painful and filled with despair?

Life is an amazing journey.  I hope you have the courage, wisdom and loving support from yourself and loved ones to see it that way every day.

Enjoy the journey!

Dee Dee Raap