Your life is going smoothly, you feel like everything has finally lined up the way it’s supposed to be, life is GREAT! You have a job you love which affords you the luxuries and lifestyle you desire and your children are doing quite well in school, you’ve even found someone to spend your life with. 
As you are enjoying every aspect of your life, there’s a crash in the market and you get laid off! Oh no! It’s okay, don’t worry, you are very skilled, experienced and talented, you’ll find another job in no time. That time takes longer than you’d like and now your once stable finances are depleted to support your household. You start stressing because life is beginning to suck big time but you try to remain positive because you still have your family. While you’re struggling trying to keep a roof over your heads and food on the table, one of your children gets suspended for fighting and the other one brings home terrible grades. 
With everything you have going on, you see the true colors of the person you thought would be there forever, you’re now fighting and arguing all of the time which puts even more stress on you. Before you know it, you’re unemployed with mounting bills trying to deal with the issues of your children and your relationship is dying a horrible death. 
You actually say out loud “Really world, REALLY? What ELSE could go wrong”? Well, ask you shall receive, BOOM, you lose a loved one!
Here’s how GOD and the universe work with you, yes with you, they are never against you. When you ask a question such as “What else could go wrong”? they see that as a wish of sorts, you want to know how much worse life can get and they do whatever they can to grant your wish. Yes, I understand no one wants to go further into the darkness but it’s all in what you say and how you say it. I’ve learned over the last couple of years not to ask about what could go wrong, that’s not my goal, my goal is for things to constantly improve. I have changed my wording to “How does it get better than this”? when something good happens in my life. It doesn’t have to be anything major in your life, if you are running late but you’re catching all the green lights,
ask them “How does it get better than this”? and watch how things line up to get you there in time. If your children get good grades, ask and watch them continue to thrive. It’s all about wording and mindset of how your life goes…………………. #choices.
When it feels like we’re sitting in the pits of hell, our first instinct is to seclude ourselves, distancing ourselves from any and everyone who cares about us. The reasons we choose seclusion vary just as much as we do as individuals but here are the 2 main ones I have for myself: 1. I feel like a failure for not being able to support my family which carries shame and 2. I don’t want to burden anyone else with my issues because I know they are going through things in their own lives. 
I have learned this is a very selfish way to be due to the fact that those who care about you want to be there for you. You feel like this is your hell but, believe me, you’ll emerge quicker from the darkness with the help of others. Leaning on others during your darkest moments doesn’t make you weak, it actually shows your strength to be vulnerable and trusting. The help they provide varies just as much as the situation, some will be there financially while others are the shoulder you need to cry on.
When we love and truly care about someone, it hurts us to see them struggling and hurting and we’ll do anything we can to help them out of it. We don’t realize how selfish we are being when we shut someone out, it makes them feel rejected in a way you won’t understand until it happens to you. 
I consider myself to be a very nurturing person and sometimes the need to make sure someone I care about feels better comes across as pushy and invasive. I have learned that you need to give certain people some time on their own to figure things out, if you push too hard, they end up resenting and getting angry with you. It’s funny how we insist on being there for others but won’t let anyone near us in our time of need.
When we’re sitting in that pit of hell, feeling the flames of shame and depression burning around us, we can’t see any light because we’re stuck in our own heads, replaying what went wrong in every situation, even going back decades and thinking “If I had chosen that path at that time, I wouldn’t be here now”. 
The reality is, everything you are going through in life is supposed to happen the way it does to grow you into the person you are destined to be; you have to go thru it in order to grow thru it. I have been very fortunate to have people in my life who have given me a short time to sit on the pity pot and have my time to stew but it’s not a long time. They know if I’m left alone for too long, it’ll be harder to help me recover, I believe I have 24 hours at which point the phone calls commence. I’ve also been blessed to have people in my life who won’t let me push them away because they know I need them in my life during the hardest periods. Case in point, when it nears either the anniversary of my father’s passing or his birthday, I tell people I’ll be MIA for about a week to deal with my emotions but I have a couple of friends who told me, “No, not this year. We will not allow you to be alone and hurting, you have us”. 
I’m not going to lie, I tried hard to stay to myself but they made sure I wasn’t sad and alone. They made sure we were together as much as possible and allowed me to talk about him and cry if I needed but they were there for me and it meant so much to me. This is a perfect example of how we don’t fully understand the impact our simple gestures have on those we care about.
We are all going to go thru things in life, I get it, shit happens, there’s no way to avoid it but there are different ways to handle it. We all have a Phoenix within us who rises from the flames of hell only to come out cleaner and stronger than when we went in. 
You’ve been in the deepest depths of hell before but look at you now! You’re not the same person you were when you went in, you’ve learned and grown from the experiences. If you feel as though you’re repeating the same cycle over and over again, chances are you haven’t grown or learned from your experiences and it’s time to re-evaluate your choices in life. If you can’t keep a job in a certain field, it might be due to that not being the field you’re destined for, explore your passion and see where it takes you. If you can’t maintain a steady, successful relationship, maybe it’s the choice in the type of person you’re insistent on choosing which isn’t the person destined for you. Just because we are given free will doesn’t mean our choices don’t have consequences. 
When we are still, we will hear GOD and the universe speaking to us but some of us only hear or understand what we want and not what’s truly being told to us. We could be torn between 2 people to spend our lives with and are told, “Let them go”. In actuality, we hear, “Let go of the one whose love for you scares you” and cling to the one who seems easier and, guess what? You’re still not happy. 
We pray about our job and are shown other avenues but are too afraid of uncertainty that we stay in the job which brings us no joy and doesn’t grow us, we’re miserable but we have a paycheck, right? What makes you think if you followed your heart, GOD and the universe that you wouldn’t be happy? Sometimes the thing which scares you the most is the best thing which will ever happen to you. Happiness and fear can’t reside in the same place, don’t let fear occupy your mind, spirit or heart, you deserve all life has to offer.