Accepting it Wasn't For You

Accepting it Wasn’t For You

Written by Lisa Whiteman

The 1000 Mile Challenge was not the only place and time in my life I have felt the struggle and been stuck in the hurt locker.  Like everyone else I have been hurt, cheated, lied to, shamed, had so much dirt thrown at me, and struggled so much I couldn’t begin to understand why it was happening or how I was going to get myself out of it.  This is one reason I always felt my age and life experience would serve to help me on my journey through Atlantic Canada’s hardest snowmobile ride.  Sure the other women wanting to compete were younger and their sleds were bigger and faster, but could the younger woman continue riding when her hands were numb, because I did.  Could the younger woman in her early twenties continue through blinding snow, because I did.  If not for experiences that taught me resilience, and the ability to fight through discomfort and see something to the end, could I have kept going? The times I stood staring at myself asking, why does this need to happen to me?  Why do I need to constantly learn the hard way or take the long way around things?  Why can’t I take a short quick easy route for once and just reap the rewards?  The biggest question of all and the cause of so much frustration, why do I constantly need to be tested?  The peace I gained when I learned this one simple ingredient; things never happened to me, they happened for me and if they weren’t happening for me, they were happening through me.  Experience I was gaining, and courage and strength I was gaining may not have been to teach me a lesson or force me into a life I hated, they were happening for someone else through me so that one day on their journey I could be there with an experience that could help them.  Learning a skill in life perhaps they were not strong enough to learn to help themselves, so this lesson took place through me to help someone weaker.  Don’t look at it like the lessons are always for you, look at it as a lesson that you were strong enough to learn to help the next person in line.  Accept that it isn’t always for you and the lesson is a gift being sent to someone else, someone younger, someone weaker, or someone so focused on survival in other areas they lack the capacity to learn something new and need you to help them.  Go outside yourself, leave your ego and accept that perhaps that thing that happened that doesn’t make sense yet wasn’t for you, and open yourself to the possibility that it is for someone else.