“You are excactly where you need to be.”

I’ve seen this quote pin, pin, pinning over on pinterest.  I’ve seen it typed up and tweeted on twitter, and I’m certain a friend has shared it on their Facebook page.  I’m not even denying, I, surely, shared it myself.

But, I don’t know about this.  Because what if you are not? What if you are not exactly where you need to be?  It’s not something I’ve been pondering, picking away at, or loosing sleep over.  It was just a pop in, passing, thought after a night of in-sufficient sleep.  A passing thought that now wants to pick a place in my brain.

What if you are somewhere that you didn’t intend to go?  I think that can be said of most of us.  One day, during the dishes, the suds are building and bubbling, and you wonder how life got as sharp as the knife you just cleaned.  Why the sweet isn’t sticking like the sugar you are trying to scrape off the saucer.  The view out the window, while washing away, is hauntingly the same, or so foreign to the one you originally formed in your imagination.

Maybe you chose where you are because first choice was taken or taking too long.  Sometimes it’s all the right choices, at the wrong time.  Many times we make the best choices we can with what we have at the time: unseasoned knowledge, little experience, and hearts out beating our brains.

Sometimes where we are is where we directed ourselves with our life plans or lack of. But . . . what if where you are is where someone else dropped you off at? Someone else’s life spilled all over yours.  Got in every crook and crevice.

You are exactly where you need to be.  You are not “exactly” where you are supposed to be.  You are where you chose to be.  You are where someone influenced you to be.  You are where someone else left you.  You are off course.  You are on course.  You are where you are.

I’m moving on from “You are exactly where you need to be.”

Maybe it’s more like. . .

 

 

You are learning exactly what you need to learn.

Because if you are in hole, a dark place, a pit, a black space of nothing with everything swimming in your head….then you are not exactly where you are supposed to be.  You are where you ended up or where someone pushed you, maybe right over the edge.

I once thought if I did “this” than “that.”  If “that, than I did “this” wrong.  If A + B then C.  Always C.  Then life lived all over me.  In the crooks and every crevice.  Everything was gray and it covered all my black and white.  It certainly wasn’t where I wanted to be.  But, it was where I was.  I couldn’t see the light that I knew was there.  Always there.  In the dark, fumbling, sometimes fighting the light, I begin to learn things I would know no other way.  Things like “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it.” (John 1:5).  That all things can work together for good (Romans 8:28).  It happens like this……out of our greatest pain, can come our greatest purpose.  I’ve seen it time and time again.  Up close and personal.  People on my path.  Friends broken and bound, now beyond brave.  They were where they never dreamed they would be and because of  it they are, now, where they never dreamed they would be.

In a pit, that feels like a personal prison is where you just might find freedom.  In a pit or on a path, if you are living life or life has lived all over you, you are learning exactly what you need to learn.  You will learn forgiveness.  You will learn to be brave.  You will learn to speak up.  You will learn to be quiet.  You will learn to love others more deeply and yourself more wholly.  You will learn that there is a way out.  And a way forward.  That you may not be exactly where you need to be, but that you can learn exactly what you need to be taught on the way to where you are going.

I’m clear we don’t always get the lesson, the plan or the purpose without the pit.  But, I’m certain we aren’t supposed to stay in the pit.  We can’t live in the gray or the black or the white.  We have to live in the light.  The light that we may fight at first is the light that, will fight for us and forge a way forward.  We then put one foot in front of the other.

Let’s learn the lessons, lovelies…. it doesn’t just benefit ourselves it benefits many.  There are others out there who will see a way out because of your very story.  Your private pain may just help plenty out of their pit.

image via Kris Atomic