This past weekend I did a craft show.  You know, the kind of show where people sell their homemade, homegrown, handmade items to local shoppers looking to buy unique gifts for themselves and their loved ones.  People love them! I love doing them!  And at the same time, this one was a little different for me.  I made a total of -$125.  Yup, you read that right: negative one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Scary right?  Yes, especially because the crafter in all of us wants to make things and sell them!  My children were selling their own items and actually made more money than I did!  It would have been so easy to get discouraged and give up on doing any future shows.  And here’s the truth: this was not my first “in the red” show…I think it was my 3rd or 4th show!  So, I get to take it as an opportunity to learn.

What can I learn?  Resiliency.  What does it mean to BE resilient?  I get to stay the course.  I get to improve my presence in my booth by showing off my items in a different way, having more display artistry.  Some of the feedback I got was that my items were not visible when you walked by my booth. I needed a better way of displaying my items.  Ok, great!  That is something I can change and transform into.

But, what about those feelings of despair, unworthiness, anger, frustration?  How do you breakdown and experience the feelings and breakthrough to transformation?  We get to be resilient!  We get to try things again in a different way.  We get to look at the possibilities and focus on the next thing that gets to happen.  You see, there has to be breakdowns before something amazing happens.  There has to be space to grow and learn and room to create something, even in the spaces where we think that transformation doesn’t exist!  Because that’s how the world was created, something beautiful from nothing.  As a Christian, I believe in the beginning, God created the world out of nothing.   (link Gen. 1)

In choosing to be resilient, we are able to continue our journey through life, living and experiencing it for everything that it has to offer us. How amazing are our lives in that we have the free-will to choose life in this way?!  We get to be rigorous, focus on our goals, be intentional in our creation, and create something out of nothing!  This is what keeps me going; this is what inspires me! I know that this one show was not my only purpose on this planet!  It is not what defines who I am being.  There are so many things in culmination of this one little hiccup event in my life, that will change the trajectory of so many things happening.  Understanding that there is a bigger picture and a bigger reason, allows us to be open to our own realization that there is so much more to life than we can even imagine for ourselves, than we could even possibly comprehend! Setbacks are part of the growth, part of the story, part of who you are becoming.

And this is why I continue.  This is why I persevere.  This is why I am resilient. The journey is in the discovery that the only way I get to uncover how far I can go, is to physically do the work, take committed action towards my goals, and be present, open, loving, giving, and powerful in all that I am.  And being resilient is just part of the puzzle.