So I was once asked, "how can you go through what you've been through and still believe in God or a greater force in the universe?"  It is a fair question. After all, our natural logic would say that if so much bad has happened to you and you see no end, how can you believe there is some unseen force out there controlling the universe. We believe this because we expect things to go our way. We expect to be in control of our health, our work and what we get out of life.

But if we switch the scenario and do believe that we have worked hard, eaten right and done all the right things and everything goes mostly our way then how can you believe in an unseen force then guiding your life?  If there is no room for doubt in what you believe, then your faith truly cannot be tested. One might say you lack faith because you haven't been tested.

So what do you believe then when you are tested. I can't answer that for you personally. But here is what I have learned. In the process of losing everything, I have had to also let go and surrender those things to an unseen hand, an unseen force guiding my life. I realize with each step how little control I have over this life. But I am thankful for what life I have been given. For what is greater than being held tightly by the unseen hand, the guiding force of the universe?  Nothing if you allow yourself to surrender and learn what is being shown to you.

Breaking and molding, crushing you at times, this force can be very real, very painful and the greatest view of life's essence itself.

A greater gift is to share your story with others so that they may know how precious this gift of life is and how beautiful it can become. You can help not only those suffering and searching for peace but also awaken those around you to help those in need. Only a few are chosen to tell this tale. None live to tell this tale without first suffering or caring so deeply for others that they lose themselves in the process completely. It is only when we are completely immersed in this process that our eyes are opened to the truths in life, the real truths.

I have been told that the only path to true forgiveness is by letting go of the past.  Many people say the words, including me, but they aren’t really ready for surrendering to letting go.

It is a very painful process.

When I talk about forgiveness, most people assume it is about transgressions that others have bestowed upon themselves.

That is only half of it.

Most of the time we forget to forgive ourselves as well for our own transgression against others.  We can’t move forward in life without letting go of what we cannot change.

I was in a group counseling session last year learning how to transition the best life for my two girls.  The main purpose was learning how to transition from one unhappy home to two happier, well-adjusted homes after divorce.  The two child psychologists spent four hours explaining the process of not only raising the children the right way without anger, but also how to give the children room and an environment to flourish and love both parents without barriers.

One man stood up during the session about two hours in and really said that he was having a hard time forgiving his wife for what she did.  He felt that he was wronged in the end and was having to pay not only emotionally and spiritually but financially being punished as well.  I expected a short snippet of contacting a mediator or lawyer by the psychologists.  

Instead one of the child psychologists said, “You have to just let it go for the sake of your children.  Whatever has happened has happened.  And it happened for a reason.  You may not understand that reason right now but eventually you will.”

The man asked the psychologist, “then how do I get to that point and find forgiveness for my wife?”

The psychologist without pause said, “Tell her thank you for the things that she did for you and the things that she does right for the children.  Hate and thankfulness cannot live in the same environment.  Don’t allow hate to consume you.  Your children will pick up on that and that will stick with them their whole life.”

I was really taken back by the profound statement.  I wished that I had heard this as a child.  It would have made the greatest difference in my life in helping move past so many past transgressions of others against me and my transgressions towards others.

By thanking a person for what they have done right in your life, you cannot express hate and regret in the same space.  It feels as if your heart, at least for that one moment, isn’t so empty anymore and you feel something besides that emptiness, that pain.

I think forgiving my failures may be the hardest part of this transition in life for me.  The previous chapter of my story has been a painful one that I would like to close and turn the page.

Like any good book, in life there are moments of joy, pain, celebration, suffering and hopefully redemption with all things coming together in the end.  As we travel through a good book and life, it feels good to finish a chapter, good or bad, and turn the page to see what is next.  We can reread the parts we have finished or the past but we can’t change how it was written.  We can skip ahead forward, but we will miss the part about how we arrived there.

In the book of life, we can only live in the moment, the chapter we are writing right now.  After writing the last chapter of our book, the book will be closed and that will be the legacy we leave behind for others to follow and hopefully find inspiration and hope.  Fear of the past and fear of the future is a choice.  It is the only thing that you can control.

The past has happened and you should not fear it anymore.  It doesn’t define you.  Yes you have gone through it and it has molded your character, but it doesn’t define who you are fully.

Fear of the future is always uncertain so why fear it.  We cannot control our future fully.  Whether we think we know it or not, the only certainty in life is that everything can change.  In fact, sometimes everything must change to get where we need to be.  Sometimes this is a painful reality, sometimes it is a wonderful discovery.

I have been through so many things to get to this chapter of my life.  My turning page is here.  This new chapter is one that I wish to write in the moment, without fear of the past or fear of the future.  I still struggle with my fears, forgiveness and so many other things, but at least I am aware of my “demons” and what only I can work on myself to build a better person.  I am working on becoming a better person for myself, for my children and then to help others.  Anything beyond that would be an unexpected welcome in this lifetime.

But I still have hope for the future and not so much fear anymore.  I do have bad days that consume me.  Each day I work on having less of those that I can control.

I live in the moment, the hour, the minute that I am in and I am turning the page to move forward.

What is something that almost everyone struggles with in life?  Clarity.  We ask ourselves over and over what will tomorrow bring, what is my five-year plan, will I live another day, when will I meet my soulmate, why am I in this relationship...  The string of why's and what if's are infinite.  Yet we when look to our past, we can see then and only then an almost perfect clarity.  We can see our mistakes, what we did right, what we did wrong and also how we got to where we are right at this moment.  It is when we try to look forward that things can get confusing.

I remember my grandfather in his later years.  He always had such a peace about things.  It was like he had all the answers and he had everything figured out.  The truth is he had learned from his past that nothing is truly in our control and everything can change.  Once you realize that then your perspective on life changes.  That perspective in itself is a moment of clarity.

To gain this clarity perspective, you must first surrender to the fact that you can only control so much.  You can't truly control other people, gravity, bad luck, good luck or how the chips may fall if you will.  You might be able to control some things but if you look at the bigger picture many times you are reacting to the information that you have available to you.  You are also reacting to what you think you can do and what you see as your abilities or restraints in life.

To take things another step towards clarity, you must realize that not only are you not fully in control of you, others are not in control of you either.  We are all tethered together by forces we cannot see.  When something happens to one person, it usually effects others.  The bigger the splash, the bigger the wave or effect.  Sometimes we are moved by someone's reaction we see.  Sometimes we are moved by someone's words or how they eloquently gave us some knowledge we were seeking.  We gain the most clarity by listening to others that have experienced what we have not.  Those that have suffered, those that have lived through different things and people that seem to be able to always extract learning from experience.

Clarity has no formula.  I can't tell you what to do to achieve full clarity.  I can only share with you what I know at the moment.  And that is you must be at peace within yourself knowing that you are not in complete control of everything.  And that is ok.  Remember that no one else is either.  They may seem clear but most people battle the same issues of clarity or haven't experienced the realization that they truly are not in control.  Maybe those that think they have it all figured out have no clarity at all, just ignorant bliss.  Maybe those that realize and relinquish that they are not in control can smile because they have true clarity.

The past five years have been a gut check for me.  I thought that I had everything figured out.  I had a five, heck even a ten-year plan for what I was going to do.  Then I got sick, couldn't work anymore, lost my house, my car, all my savings until finally I lost my marriage.  At each point of loss, I would always say this must be the bottom and clarity will come soon.  And clarity never came completely at any point.  Sure I could look back and see things clearly.  But looking forward was thick mist, a fog if you will of uncertainties.

I would win some battles with my health and then lose ten others.  The weight of the world kept sitting on my shoulders until one day I realized that in order to survive, in order to thrive I had to let go of the things that I could not control.  I had to surrender to the fact that I can only do so much, can only try to be the best person I can be and then watch my seeds grow.

Sometimes what I would plant would be beautiful.  Sometimes the seeds never broke the soil.  But I was in control of planting the seeds and at least trying.  Sitting idle while the world went by wasn't going to help me gain clarity, get better or save my marriage.  Was it and is it a painful transition, sure it is.  But I have made a choice to go down a path. And down that path I will go until a better path comes before me or I can go no further.

What became clear to me is that I put the biggest limitations on myself out of fear or doubt.  When I cast aside those fears and doubts, I realized that I was holding myself back more than disease, what I thought others thought of me and even the circumstances out of my control.  I was holding myself back because I was afraid to fail, afraid to try and afraid to have more pain.  That's when I started seeing life a little more clearer.

Things began to change and the weight of expectations began to lift.  Do I have everything figured out?  Not even close.  Will I ever?  I hope not.  If I think I have everything figured out then I will have lost sight of the truth or I will be looking back on life instead of forward.  There are times that I still walk in fog but at least I have more and more days now that I don't worry about what tomorrow may hold.  And to me that is peace, that is clarity.

Every person must one day in life face a simple fact.  None of us are completely in control of our fate.  There are many forces tugging us in every direction that we try to mold and shape in a life we feel worth living.  Bad things happen.  Good things happen.  We struggle in hard times and we find hope in the little things that do go our way.

For the past year, I have been making significant physical progress with my health.  My back has healed very well and I am able to do more and more each week.  The pain that was a daily burden in my body is still there, but I have found ways to work around it, accept it and at times forget completely about it.  My mind seems to be getting stronger and my spirit is gaining ground.

This year has been a year of surrender for me.  I have had to surrender that I am not in control of the things around me, but I can change my attitude about things and keep fighting.  Now that I can say that I have completely lost my old life and the things that used to define me, I have started over.  Not just from a physical standpoint, but from an emotional and spiritual standpoint as well.  I am trying to bring forth the best person that I can be, shedding the scars of the past.  It is a process that I will write more about one day in detail.  For now just know that it has been a painful and also a liberating process at the same time.

There are so many times in life where we have to let go of things that we once loved, people that we once loved and even places that captured our hearts.  These things will happen to all of us throughout our lives.  It is important that we take the time to let them go properly and say goodbye.  Especially to the people that were a part of our lives and let them know how much we appreciate the good things we have learned from them and how they helped us to become better inside and out.  If we don't take the time to do this and let go properly, life will eventually circle around and leave us with regret or emptiness from missing the opportunity to let go properly.  I can honestly say that I have learned this the hard way and have been hit by that circle of life not cherishing those people, those moments properly.  But I am realizing this and becoming more and more thankful for the smallest pieces of hope that past my way.  For once, I am savoring every drop of hope that does come even if one day the flood gates of hope open and I drown in it.  I will bask and not take one ounce of hope for granted.  For it is that hope that has driven me this far.  A hope that life is not finished with me yet by far and that there is a greater purpose beyond the journey I've travelled to this point.

Hope is a good thing, a very good thing.  But hope only feeds what drives our purpose and that is passion.  Purpose, Passion and Hope are the three things that define, sustain and keep us moving forward to a better life (*much more to come on this topic).  It may be a life completely different than we imagined and the molding, breaking and building process is different for each one of us.  Thankfully, not all of us have to endure losing everything to realize how we can find our purpose in life.  I'd like to think that those of us that do lose so much have been chosen to do greater things if we allow ourselves to surrender to the process.  I have fought this for so long thinking that I could become the man that I used to be on my own.  I was wrong and I will never be that same man again.  And this is a good thing.  For I have seen my mistakes in life and I am still learning there is so much more that I can do.  But I could only do this by totally surrendering the person I was before and all the things that I thought I had to control.  Turns out I never really was in control of those things anyway.

So take a moment to be thankful for those little moments of hope.  Whether it be something as great as a good day or a hug/smile from a friend.  Maybe it is from old friends and family that support you and have never given up or a new friend that lifts your spirits and gives you greater hope.  Live life with purpose, fill it with passion and above all keep hope alive that life can be a wonderful thing even if that means letting go and starting over.  Don't dwell in disaster, failure or things you cannot control.  Trust me, I have been in that pool and you can't swim in it, only drown.  Never lose hope that good things can still happen even when all else is lost.

Every night, I lay awake and think of life.  Life is such a wondrous and beautiful thing that I used to take for granted.  I always thought that I was living life to the fullest back before I became where I am today.  Every day was just like every other day except for special occasions and things planned outside of the ordinary.  Life was easy and everything seemed to be falling into place.  That is what I thought a beautiful life was.  It wasn't until everything changed that I realized that life can be so much more.

Life can be something of a mystery.  We read books, magazines and watch everything about life.  I often get caught in that watching phase myself looking at what a marvelous thing life can be.  What really gets me is when I step back and realize that life is here, it is now and it is what I am doing.  When you really think about it, you can make life what you want.  It can be exciting, it can be boring, it can be like everyone else or something extraordinarily different.  Our only limitations on what life can be are what we are physically able to do and the time that we have to do it in.

I used to live life by how much I could get done in a day.  How much could I complete or accomplish before I went to bed.  Now that was living for me.  These days, I struggle to get one thing done without physically collapsing.  It isn't every day that is like that but my life is definitely unpredictable.  An unpredictable life lends itself to caution and not making plans.  I've tried making plans and constantly coming up short.  I've tried not making plans and being happy when I could do anything.  Both ways have good and bad points. 

It is said that a man makes his plans and God directs his path.  What happens when a man stops making plans?  Does he wither and die?  Does he get pushed along in the sand like a shell from the ocean tide?  There can be a season in which a person can live without plans.  When your health is taken from you and everything is questionable, even hour to hour, you take a swipe at making plans.  Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't.  I get caught up in this frustration often and it doesn't help me see and understand life.  So I tried, just for a while, to just watch the world.  I don't mean sit down and not engage with the world.  I mean meet the world where you are and watch how people engage with each other.  In this phase of my life, I am learning a lot about the world around me and what is really important.  If it were not for my condition, I would be missing watching the very fabric of life unfold before my eyes.

Some mornings I have the strength to walk for a little while.  I see hundreds of cars rushing by filled with people going somewhere, doing something.  I often wonder if they are going to work.  Do they have a big meeting that day or are they worried about paying bills this month?  My headphones are always are alway firmly embedded in my ears so that I have my own soundtrack to life instead of the noise.  The noise around us is what distracts us from really seeing the bigger picture of what's going on in life.  Your noise may be money, your job, a meeting you're going to, the kids, getting married, having a baby, so many different noises both bad and good that can crowd out observation and life.  I like to smile at the cars going by to see if someone will smile back.  Chances are someone will and I hope that small smile will dampen their noise if just for a moment.

My life has been simplified to nothing, well nothing as far as material things.  I own next to nothing, I don't have too much more to lose and I live by the kindness of others.  I do have two wonderful and beautiful daughters that I miss so very much.  I hope to be with them again someday.  That in itself will be a great life. When you are taken down to your bones then nothing can be taken for granted anymore.  The blinders are down and you are exposed for who you are and everything you do is watched carefully.  Not because you are something special per se, but because you are different than everyone else.  People are curious about what a simple life consists of and the barriers that you face every day.  No one cares about the person that can do everything and overloads themselves with more and more.  Those people are great to watch and I wish that I had half of their energy.  But at the end of the day, I ask myself what would I do if I was given a second chance at this life.  What would I do if I became well enough to do more.

I have plans sure, noble plans even.  But the true test would be when that power was given back to me.  Would I stay true to my heart and help others or would I seek to make lots of money again.  My hope would be that I would be able to help others and make a difference in this world.  Money leaves you as fast as it comes so I have no desire to chase that life again.  But it is funny how it is always in the back of my mind.  If I had money, I always think, I could do this and this and this.  Well that just isn't true for me.  If I had money, I would probably just spend more time in research hospitals looking for help and answers.  Which, by the way, is not living.  I found that out the hard way.  I could stay in my own home or lay on a beach trying to get better, write or contemplate life and healing with money.  But that doesn't change who or where I am in life.  I could use some sun though seriously.

So why do I write something entitled "Life is Beautiful" when clearly I am stuck in this seemingly infinite abyss of suffering, poverty with no end in sight?  I'll tell you why; expectation and hope.  Even in the deepest, darkest pit of suffering there is hope and an expectation that things can always get better.  Sure the opposite can be true as well but that is when you lay face down in the pit.  When you are at the bottom of life and you simply roll over face up, life appears above you.  There is light in contrast to the darkness that surrounds you.  Eventually you have the courage to get up on your knees and maybe even stand at the bottom of the pit.  Sure you may fall again but there is something within us that wants us to overcome.  It is hard to explain in simple terms so I will just say that my spirit knows there is something greater coming.  It may not be fulfilled in this life but I haven't given up on that.  It is that hope, that expectation that allows me to look at all the people around me with normal lives and normal problems and see the extraordinary.  I see the potential of so much more in humanity.  I see a better world and a world where so many of us are not mindblind to the reality that passes us by.  I see a world not driven by consumption but service to others.  A world of kindness and peace.

I also see the clouds that roll by and the overwhelming darkness that is the reality we live in.  I don't know how to change the world and roll back the clouds.  There are no clever quotes or processes that I possess to change this world overnight.  But I can tell you that as dark as life can be, it can be darker still if we plant our faces down and don't try to change things.  Trust me, I have plenty of mud on my face from rolling over face down.  Every day is a journey and life, no matter the direction, can always become greater than we can imagine.