Bringing pieces together

Partnered with summer vacation, I was invited to be part of a book launch team for Mandy Arioto's Starry-eyed. This is a book of essays on being a woman. A lot of them are about parenting as Mandy is the new President of MOPS International. An organization dedicated to women with children in the birth to pre-school years.

After reading the first two chapters I am captivated by this book. The theme of the book is to find the light in dark places. To recognize and make peace with the fact that there will be seasons of both light and dark in our lives. Everything in life has a pair or an opposite.  The intro alone is thought provoking. Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"...bring together the light and dark in their lives and make peace with all of it."

I have had and will continue to have seasons of both bright light and the darkest black. It's just been in the last few years that I have been able to make peace with it. To embrace both sides of myself. It was in the darkest part of my life that others were sent to me. They helped me see the light. They held me close as I walked the long journey into my past acknowledging the pain and hurts of my younger self. They walked with me and held my hand to the door's of the medical offices to get medication. The inner part of myself that had been given a firm foundation of faith and resolve gave me the strength to have really tough conversations with my parents and my self. It was in that darkness that I saw the light reflected in my friends and family's eyes that led me out of the valley and up on to the hillside once again to see the light.  

The psychologist Carl Jung said, "becoming whole means bringing back together that which has been town apart." When we do that, begin to stitch together the dark and light parts of our lives, we become who we are meant to be. We become the whole self God created us to be.