Going Back To Blogging

Well; everyone,  it's time to finally say it.  I'm back!   It's been three years since I blogged on any type of a basis at all, and four years since my return to the States from Honduras (which is when I stopped blogging with any type of regularity at all!).   I have to admit that while I loved having this blog as a sounding board and a place to share my innermost feelings during my journey in Honduras, that it's been difficult for me to get into blogging in any depth since I came home.   Things just haven't been all that interesting since I came home.  I feel like I haven't had anything really exciting to share .  I feel like I've returned to a life of "normalcy:" and that nothing could be worth reading about after all of the incredible stories I shared a few years back.

In the past couple of months, things have changed.   I returned from Honduras on fire with love for the people I had met, the friendships I had made, and the memories I took with me that I knew would last a lifetime.   Over the course of the past few years,  I found myself lost again.   Due to the economy, I still have been unable to secure a job in the non-profit sector (which is where I've wanted to build a career now for years), I've fallen into a rut and a depression, and things have not really gone my way. I've found myself in less than satisfying relationships/friendships and felt as though people never have been able to truly understand me and what I'm all about.  I've more or less kept these feelings to myself, as I felt they were mine to contend with.  I've been in some really unfortunate situations with people over the course of the past year or so, but I never could quite get to the bottom of what was making me feel the way that I was feeling.  About a month ago,  I woke up in the middle of the night overcome with deep sorrow.  You know that feeling...the one deep down in the pit of your stomach when you just aren't happy with yourself and your surroundings.  That feeling that something is missing and that feeling of emptiness.

For the first time in many years, I REALLY prayed for an answer to why I was feeling the way I was feeling.     I prayed for the strength to get through my depression, anxiety, and struggles.  We've all had struggles with our faith at some point or another in our lives.   For me, after many years of Catholic school, I turned away from the church in my 20's seeing no place for organized religion in my life.  While I can appreciate the need for rules, I felt as though such rigidness creates conflict between ourselves as humans, rather than providing us with unity.  As I'm sure most of my readers know, I'm a very liberal and accepting type of person- of ALL religions, orientations, nationalities, etc. During my time in Honduras, I felt like there really was a higher power and being.   There's no way that so many people who were surrounded by so much suffering and sadness could be so faith-filled without any explanation other than a higher being.   Upon returning home, things went back to the way they always had been for many years before my time abroad.

That night in prayer, I realized what was missing from my life.  I missed the sense of peace that being in Honduras brought me.   Everything here seems to be one big competition.   People are constantly in a battle with one another for power and attention.  I've seen people deliberately hurt myself and those closest to me time and time again over the past few years.  I myself have seen ugly sides to my personality rear their heads once again.   I've caught myself saying and doing things I have not been proud of.   In Honduras, life was so simple.  People actually stopped to help their neighbors.   There are no greater acts of love and compassion that I've witnessed in my 32 years on this planet as those I saw occur before my eyes in Honduras.    Sure, there was corruption.  Yes, it was a machismo culture.  True, sometimes you didn't have electricity or running water.  You did, however, always have each other.  There was a sense of genuinuity and purity among the Honduran people that I don't see here often.  I realized that night that I missed compassion.  I missed simplicity.  I missed the random acts of kindness.   I realized that I don't need a church or an institution to provide me with those things.   All I need is myself.    I'm not a perfect person, and I don't ever claim to be.  I make mistakes, I falter, and I have hurt many people along this journey in life.   However, we can all do great things when we put our heart and our soul into them.   I realized that I was granted an amazing gift in life-  the gift of empathy and compassion. I truly realized that my Creator gave me these gifts for a reason.   I still struggle daily with what I am doing in life and the direction I am going in, but I now believe in the power of prayer, and I know that if I keep the faith, that God is going to guide me to do amazing things in my life.  What they are, I don't know yet.  But with my newly fulfilled faith and desire to spread love and compassion wherever I go,  I know that my life journey has lots of beauty in store for me. :-) My religion is love and kindness. That is the part of Honduras that I still take with me to this day.