Blessings and Opportunities Disguised as Financial Set-backs

I want to thank all of you who responded to my recent blog on How to Manage Your Fears After Job Loss. Your stories and insights were very thought-provoking! My thoughts and prayers are with you during this time and I pray that you each find new jobs soon.

In particular, I'd like to thank Jeanette Patindol for sharing her inspiring story of financial difficulties that led her to find her perfect work as a writer: Here's Jeanette's comment:

"The business my then-husband and I were running went bankrupt, and all our savings were used to pay up business debts, which were not enough even. It went on for three months, and we even had to resort to dole-outs from family for our day-to-day needs."
Read more about Jeanette's story on Beliefnet.

Many of your comments reminded me of how very grateful I am for the work I have been blessed with and how often, as many of you said, when one door closed in my life, another door opened. Sometimes we can be so focused on the losses and setbacks in our lives, that we forget to look for the opportunities and blessings that may be waiting for us. Because the truth is, everything we lose creates an opening for something new to come into our lives. We must always remain open and receptive to receiving the good that is available to us, which is why it's so important to stay positive and proactive on our own behalf.

I have had many losses in my life that I now have immense gratitude for. Whatever pain I may have suffered in the loss was small compared to the blessings and new opportunities that followed. In hindsight, I know now that anything I have ever lost, I no longer needed and that as long as I held on to my faith and trust in God, I have been given everything I did need instead.

So, while it may be difficult, sometimes the only thing we can do is to surrender to what is happening, bless the experience and pray to stay open to receiving our higher good. God never takes something away from us without also offering us something in it's place. Today, I ask you to consider being grateful for this time in your life as an opportunity to receive some new blessing or opportunity, whether that is the opportunity to explore some new horizon, the chance to dusk off your dreams, build a new life, the gift of change, or the opportunity to grow into more of who you always wanted to be. Sometimes, when life hands us lemons, we are simply being guided to the lemonade stand!

Read Beliefnet's Rabbi Brad Hirshfield's 8 Ways to Stay Grateful in Hard Times.

Today's blessing is taken from the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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