Surviving

1. 

   "Every survivor, regardless of what they survive, knows the hammering of the sea, and the rock we find refuge on is an exposed place where we finally accept each other." Mark Nepo
   
   

   I heard Mark Nepo in an interview last night say that while within any challenge and broken, we need to remember that everything else is not broken.  Seems good advice.  Life will break us down.  Whenever I am around a young, arrogant person, I know that life will have its way with him/her, with challenges which give each person the chance to shed our rough edges.  I remember distinctly when I shed a large number of my rough edges.  It was when I was in my 30's and faced a life challenge I thought I would never face -- broken commitments within a committed relationship -- it was just what I needed to take me to my knees, and in that position I lost arrogance, self-pride, and the feeling of immunity.  As Nepo says, what breaks us is not important (which does not negate the pain of the breaking) -- it is that the breaking opens us in ways where Life can do Her work.  The breaking allows us to be more fully who we were meant to be.