Do you ever wonder how you will react or respond when things happen that you don’t expect to happen? When life doesn’t look quite like how you thought, or your plans get thrown out the window when life sends you on an unwelcome Segway. Do you like to think of yourself as an ever ready pillar of light and love and hope, ready to face all of the hard with all of the strength and determination, but also with poise and grace and everything befitting of a strong capable human being who has their life together and can cope when life isn’t very awesome?

Things have an uncanny way of flinging themselves into perspective when your world goes a little lopsided and you find yourself standing, shaking, on uneven shaky ground. And if you’re anything like me, and I hope to goodness at least someone is, when the hard comes (and the hard does come) you find yourself not so strong and rosy after all, all resolve gone. Instead of standing strong and courageous ready to face the battle, you actually just wants to scream and run away, but also curl up and cry.

So heroic.

There have been many times I have assured myself that when ‘such and such’ happens I will most definitely respond like the wonderful giver of light and love and grace that I am. But in reality, I just find that I am fully let down by me. Once again disappointed with myself and my human response to my humanity. Naive little me likes the romantic version of myself, I like to think I could cope really well with all that life would throw at me. But that rose coloured version of Ferne was blooming in my mind before life had really thrown much at me at all.

We went through a season of big change and big hard recently. And I did not respond to it the way I thought or hoped I would. In hindsight it’s easy to say “If only we had know, we shoulda, woulda, coulda…” but I didn’t know. Void of security and certainty, surrounded by ifs and maybes and nothings to build on, second guessing ourselves every step of the way, no longer seeing things through rose coloured glasses, barely seeing anything at all. Things could have gone very differently and we are blessed with the way things did work out in the end, but in the midst of the battle it is so hard to stand tall and strong and courageous when there is nowhere solid to place your feet. Don’t get me wrong, the season brought many silver linings and blessings I will be forever grateful for. We are stronger and better as a result and I am so thankful for it. But it was hard in ways I didn’t know. And the hardest part was the disappointment in myself for not quite getting anywhere close to the ‘flourishing in the face of adversity’ benchmark I naively thought I could reach.

But my ever loving, ever long suffering husband told me I needed a focus shift. He said I was looking at it all wrong. He told me to stop focussing on the what ifs and the failures and the wasted time, but just take a minute to see what battles I did fight and win, the times I did get back up again or get up at all, all the tiny moments where I didn’t let it all consume me. He even told me to count the literal loaves of bread I baked and seeds I sowed in the garden, the times when I didn’t yell at the kids, the kilometres I did run. Dinner on the table. Clothes on the line. Tears wiped away. Kisses on foreheads. Words written. Because they were all wins. Every single one. Tiny victories. I thought that all that time I was standing still, or worse – going backwards… but when I stopped to count the little triumphs it turned out that, in spite of the war waged against us, we never once stopped moving forwards. Even when the motion was so slow I could barely see even see it. It was there. A pillar of light and love and hope. Strength and determination. Grace.