stop fearing the storms and start dancing with the thunder

​We often think of survivors as resilient. As much as that is sometimes true, it's not always the case.

I've come to know I spent much of my life focused on survival. I lived with a determination to make it through whatever challenge came my way. Whether they were challenges I created or challenges others created or just the natural challenges of the world, I lived determined to come out on the other side of them.

I always did, and I'm thankful for that.

There's been a shift the last decade of my life, though. I've shifted from having the mindset of survival to the mindset of resiliency.

A survivor often lives in fear and anxiety, always preparing themself to get through the next threat. I know that. And when I wasn't living in fear and anxiety, I was finding ways to drown them out.

The resilient human, however, leans on hope and recovery and learning. They don't like threats much more than the survivor does, but they come to embrace them as an opportunity to grow. They come to see threats not as something that might spell the end, but as something preparing them for a stronger new beginning.

A survivor's prayer often focuses on 'get me through this day'. The resilient prayer often begs to learn something useful today that will prepare them for tomorrow.

If you're surviving a challenge today, I applaud you. I hug you. It's not easy to adopt a survivor's mentality. More and more people each day live on the edge of giving up on the idea of surviving.

I have been there.

I want to challenge you, though, while you are there, while you are in survival mode, assure yourself you will make it to the other side, but then also ask yourself, what can I take with me when I do?

What can I take from this storm that will make me less fearful of the thunder in the next one, because the next one IS coming. And even more, what in the here and now can teach me to dance with that thunder when it does come?

It's possible you have no idea. The emotions of survival often make it hard to learn and grow. So ask a friend or a family member or a pastor or a counselor. Share your fear and then ask, what do you think I can take from this?

Because that has beautifully shifted me from survival mode to resilient mode. Sharing my struggle. Sharing my fear. Sharing all the emotions that get bottled up by the intense will to survive.

When you share emotions, you start to discover others have been there before you. Others have survived and learned, and in the sharing of emotions, you begin to dance.

Dance to the sound of the thunder.

And in time, you'll hear the storms coming and not fear them. You'll come to know the storms are not here to take you out, but to pave the way forward.

I love the survivor me. More today than ever.

But more than that, I love me the dancer. And trust me, in SO many ways, I never pictured me ever becoming a dancer.

But it helps me feel sure that you can dance too.

If I can we all can.

Together.