Just My Thoughts

PAGE TWO

By: Christina M. Meide

Maybe, if I live to be 82, I will have learned to stay away from what causes me to repeat those same mistake patterns, but I will still be far from perfect and all knowing.

I have struggled, as all of us have, in different ways. I've had children (four) and discovered how individual they all are and how difficult the teenage years can be. I've had times before my first child was born where I survived on popcorn as there was no money for much of anything else. I've had several bad relationships, choosing men who did not take a relationship in the same vein as I did and sworn that my heart would never mend. I've struggled to find a career to support my family. I've struggled for happiness.

Despite all this, I still have no "true" idea of what it's like to be crippled, extremely poor, blind, totally deaf, a different nationality, in ill health, a criminal, homeless, etc. If I am to strive to be Godlike, I need to have a "full" understanding of many different lives to get to the point of full compassion, forgiveness and love for all of mankind. To learn all these things is to strive to be Godlike, and my belief is, we all live multiple lives for the growth of our souls and to continue striving for all we can be.

I truly believe that before we are born, we have the opportunity to view lives we've previously lived, examine the lessons we've learned and decide which lessons will be valuable to learn next. Once we've done this, we can choose the location to begin our journey and the people who can best help us (our parents) in the beginning and those who will teach us (our siblings, other relatives, and friends) along the way.

This is also why I do not believe in coincidence. When we're young, nothing makes a great deal of sense, but the older we get, the more we can look back at our lives and see that one experience flowed into another as though it were planned out that way. We can see how one step led us to one place and the next step expanded upon the previous experience. We can also see valuable lessons we have learned along the way.

We've met people in our lifetimes who either cause us great joy or great pain, but either way, we always seem to learn something from them. When the chips are down, why do we seem to meet someone who knows exactly what to say or do to bring us back up again? Coincidence? People come and go in our lives from beginning to end. Though each one stays in our lives for different periods, I think we can all look back on some of the relationships and realize that when these people have taught us what they were meant to teach us and we have done the same, the relationship becomes less important to maintain as it once was and we drift apart. We still hold the valuable lessons, but no longer have the relationship. We then move on to others who have something to teach us as well. Coincidence again? I don't believe so.

There is a saying we use when we see someone get something valuable to themselves whether it's a good paying job, winning the lottery, or any number of things. This saying is "being in the right place at the right time". What do you think causes them to be in the right place at the right time? Coincidence or a pre-plan of their life?

There is no part of me that can believe this is all by chance and for no apparent reason. If our lives end after this one - what exactly was the point of living at all?

There IS a purpose to all we experience - one we have chosen for ourselves. We help others along their journeys and they help us. It's an interweaved connection that we are allowed to see upon each death we experience. Our deaths do not occur until we have achieved what we chose to learn in this life.

You might be asking, what of children who are still born? My thought is that they decided at the last minute that what they wanted was not the best plan OR it was preplanned between the parents and the child (in soul form) to help the parents learn lessons they had chosen for their lives. I miscarried twice before having the four children that I have. It was crushing, like no feeling I could ever express, but it also made me stronger and much more appreciative of the children I was able to have. I feel those two children gave me the opportunity to understand the "real" value of a child which I might not otherwise have had, to allow me to be as good of a parent as I could be.

Sometimes the lessons are harsh, but I believe we have chosen them ourselves and that what we learn in each life is very valuable. We MUST learn compassion. We MUST learn love. We MUST learn forgiveness. The only way to truly do this is to live many different lives and to "really" put ourselves in "another person's shoes."