I have a friend who calls me the Queen of Re-frame. Re-frame as in: well, it may look like this but we can think of it like this! I actually prefer to think of it as looking at what is really true, instead of buying the story I might be telling myself….or the story someone else might be telling.
For instance: I thought I wanted to have children. I couldn’t have children, and now it turned out that it was really for my highest good not have kids. I’ve gotten to mother a lot of other people instead of my own kids. I relish the luxury of a simpler life without children. Certainly my life is more suited to who I am and how I want to live my life, just as it is. And it makes time spent with my nephews and my friend’s baby all the sweeter.
I was weeding our extremely overgrown garden this morning (to the delight and relief of our neighbors, I am sure). I could be (and was) overwhelmed but how out of hand the weeds were…..or I could say, I love this abundance of growth! I welcome the abundance this symbolizes. Look how rich my life is! This joyous profusion of nature can hardly be contained!
While it may sound like re-framing is making lemonade out of lemons, I think it may be what is actually true, if we choose to look at a situation from a softer, more open, more trusting heart. Often, I am not aware of what is for my highest good, but in willingness and with surrender to my Higher Self, my true wisdom, it occurs anyway.
Some of the worst things in my life have been my greatest teachers, my greatest heart openers. They seemed disastrous at the time….and they were essential steps to who I am today, and everything in my life has contributed in some strange way to me loving and appreciating who I am now.
So maybe the greatest re-frame is to give up the idea that mistakes were made, and you’ll never recover from or forgive yourself for some of the things done or said. We are always doing science experiments. If we didn’t do something “wrong” or something that felt bad, or that we regretted, we’d never know what that felt like, and that enables us to make a different, more loving choice. By choosing to bless what doesn’t work instead of condemning it, we have compassion for our flawed human selves and can be grateful for the opportunity to make a choice based in love.
And then we arrive at the ultimate re-frame: It’s all good, and it’s all about Love.