you are not broken, you are blooming

It's so crazy to me how much my perspective has changed about trials and struggles. Struggles used to mean weakness to me. Trials meant failure, I messed up somewhere so here is my punishment. Press through them, get to the end and hopefully you can hold your breath long enough to make it out alive!

With that mindset, let me tell you, you live in a whole lot of fear. Fear of failing, fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of screwing up your life for good. Trials will come and go whether you can check every "I'm a good person box" or you know for a fact you always screw up everything.

It's so easy to get caught up in "survival mode", tip toe around, don't take chances and over think everything, thinking you can live a life so good, so safe, that you might just bypass the struggles. The biggest issue with this is here comes the day your world is flipped upside down and you're left with a bunch of where did I go wrong, what did I do to deserve this, why me?! And your fear starts to spiral out of control because you have now lost control of your life.

Instead of viewing struggles so negatively, consider struggles as an opportunity for growth. Just as the flowers need rain to grow and blossom, so do we. We need seasons of rain to help us bloom into our fullest potential. To challenge us. Without it we would be stuck, we would be weak. We would never get to see the beauty of time healing and growing us. We would never get to experience the beauty of change. We would never get to experience the freedom of letting go and accepting who we are as we evolve into something that looks different.

Strength, courage, beauty, a deeper sense of life, love and who we are can come out of struggles if we allow it.

Watching a flower bloom makes me think, maybe just maybe, we aren't so broken as we feel going through storms but just growing and stepping into our next stage of life. Getting stronger and more beautiful day by day. Each stage of a flowers growth is necessary and perfect in its own way. Each stage is a step forward. And as it grows it doesn't look negatively on the stage before it, it just continues moving forward, growing, all along highlighting the beauty and power of the seed that started it all, the little seed that got it there. It is still the same tiny seed that was planted, it's just a much better version of itself.

Be thankful for your trials. Thrive off of them. Use them as a launching pad to push yourself forward, to grow you, to better you. All the while not underestimating the seasons/stages of the past but understanding that healthy things grow, they evolve. We should be in constant pursuit of light, love and happiness.

So next time you're face to face with a struggle in life I challenge you to be curious of it. Think about all of the ways you could possibly benefit or grow from it, then run with it!