Don’t cut yourself on your gifts

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.
— James Russell Lowell 

Success rains down for no apparent reason. Tragedy strikes like a freight train. We’re left to deal with the results. We can allow our egos to swell over our sudden good fortune, or we can humbly accept the fruit of our labor and continue to better ourselves. We can lie down and give up after a tragedy, or we can grieve, get up, and begin taking steps to move on with our lives.

Look at the situations in your life. Have you been given success? Are you learning the lessons of loss? Perhaps yours is the gift of the ordinary. Don’t walk too boastfully through your successes, nor remain too long in your grief. And don’t sleep through an ordinary life. You’ll lose your sense of wonder and awe, and when it ends, you won’t know where you’ve been.

We cannot always control what will happen to us. We need to let go of any false thoughts that we can. We can choose how we’ll handle the situation just like we choose how we’ll pick up a knife—by grabbing the handle or the blade.

Watch out for the cutting edge.

What you do with what you have been given is important.

God, thank you for what I’ve been given.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go

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