“Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.” ~Unknown

I have learned to trust that even when things feel unbearable, and my heart is broken in two, the pain I am experiencing somehow catapults me into a place a greater strength, wisdom and clarity than where I was before.

Life did not turn out the way I planned when I was 13, 22 or 40. Life gave me beautiful blessings along the way, but inevitably, I found myself being stripped of those things I clung to the tightest –relationships and facades that I had been taught to huddle around me.

I learned about the spiritual purpose of loss and the way back to freedom, strength and joy. But it was not easy. It took things falling apart … like, everything, falling apart.

Four years ago I became a different person.

For decades, I had been following what others told me to do, how to feel, how to act, and how to value/de-value myself. I let myself be pulled into the pits of unhealthy relationships which asked me – no demanded me – to pretend like I was everything I was not. I agreed to that pattern for far too long.

The masks I wore to cover the conflicts and secrets were diminishing me from the inside out. I kept going, trying to hold onto my dreams, but soon enough I would see I was not meant to save things as they were any longer. Things would soon explode like an atom bomb, and I would be forever changed.

Outside of raising three children, one who was born medically fragile, I was trying to keep my head above water by writing, speaking and helping others. I just was not helping myself. Inevitably, my soul would drop to the ground whenever I looked at my own life.

I knew things had to change or I was going to shrivel up without ever reaching the divine life that I was so deeply seeking. For years, my life was crumbling and hardly anyone knew it . . . my child was constantly in the hospital, my marriage was falling apart, and I was helping to heal others but getting sicker myself.

Then the bomb went off that turned the lights out in my world – someone I loved dearly took her life while I was trying to help her.

Life shattered into a million pieces. Things went black for a time, and I found myself in the Dark Night of the Soul. Where was home? Where was God? Where was the Light? How could I keep trying to hold everything together when it refused to be held by me at all?

It was in the numbing, soul-searching, life-altering months that followed that I ran as fast as I could. I ran both fearfully away from and fiercely toward God, screaming in circles about how He could let these things happen and how He could leave me here to figure it all out by myself.

I was drowning in confusion, guilt, illness, isolation, loneliness, fear and despair. How do you explain the saddest place? If you have been there, you know. Despair is a deep hole of nothingness drowning in an overwhelming sea of everything-ness that feels like it swallows you whole.

I felt alone, abandoned and completely swallowed up. I had three young children, community obligations, a book to finish writing, and a career that I desperately loved. In those months, I dug holes all over the landscape my life, looking for clues from God and some place of spiritual meaning in the midst of the darkness. I finally got still and listened.

And that is when I found it. And It found me. I started getting a beautiful flood of spiritual communication from divine beings.

Somehow, in the middle of the breaking apart of my world, my spirit opened a window, and a miracle happened. God / Source met me in that hopeful space and a new light shone in. As Rumi put it, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

Spiritual teachers opened their doors. Books flew open. Signs flooded in. Images came during meditation and prayer. Truth spoke through nature. The voice deep inside me began to find her way back to the surface. And, holy awakening, she had a boatload to say. I cracked open, and Spirit came pouring out.

I began to find a place of understanding – and living – that I had never before dreamed possible. The lenses of fear fell off my eyes and the colorful breath of Spirit filled my being. I rose in the morning hopeful for more guidance and more validation, and it always showed up. It showed up in the form of whispers during my meditation, automatic writing flowing into my keyboard, and nurturing hawks screeching strength at me as they circled overhead.

Through guidance and messages from my guides, angels, and my Higher Self, I found the clarity that my life needed to be recreated. I had to let my marriage go and stop trying to change those who had chosen a journey so different from mine.

I had to surrender at the feet of Love and find my own truth, without trying to please anyone but the God who knows me. And all of this beauty was formed out of something that was completely broken. It is my promise to you that nothing is impossible, especially when the Soul is at the wheel.

I want to encourage you to reflect on the broken places in your life and know that it was in those spaces that the Light can enter you. Your spirit seeks healing from old pain, liberation from brokenness, and relief from suffering.

Part of your healing might be seeing and appreciating the deeper, spiritual process of growth as it comes to you through challenges and loss. This is how I understand it: on a soul level, we choose challenging situations – even those that feel insurmountable – to push us to grow so that we become more authentically OURSELVES.

Our spirits came into these lives with the SOUL PURPOSE of becoming the most divine forms of ourselves while we are on this Earth. To grow, our spirits seek out people, experiences and lessons that will encourage our expansion.

Each choice we make, person we let go of, and crisis we come through helps us refine the preferences, strengths and desires of our deepest selves. It is in this awakening that we remember what we each hold inside of us – a sacred energy of love for the beautiful being of Light that we really are.