~~Wherever you are right now, it's exactly where you need to be. Whatever you are experiencing right now, it's exactly what you need to be experiencing. You may not be able to see the lesson or the gift in it, but its there, I promise you. You're learning, growing, shifting, changing and becoming more of who you're truly meant to be.~~ Unknown
I know you may not be able to see the gift in your quit. Not when you are craving a cigarette or you feel like you're missing your best friend or you are so stressed you feel like screaming, but it is there, I promise you.
Waiting for the smoke to clear, it's there. Waiting for the nerves to settle and the turmoil to ease, it's there. That precious gift that only you can open and only you can marvel at and only you can truly understand just how priceless it is.
That gift of freedom. Freedom from addiction. Freedom from your life revolving around that next cigarette. Freedom to create a life you want. Freedom to breathe and play and work and wonder without ever having to hide around the next corner to puff.
You may want the gift. You may even know it's there, just out of reach. But it's only when you get through those early days of your quit, that it begins to dance with joyful abandon. Because you have to let loose of that addiction before you begin to appreciate the freedom.
First it may only dance on the edges of your days.....you get a glimpse of the delightful sense of lightness and carefree minutes as your thoughts stray from cravings, from smoking, from struggling. But you will find that your precious gift sparkles more and more as you let go of the struggle and step away from the addictive thoughts and behaviors that held you captive.
Freedom is just a word until you feel it. Until you feel that surge of life that comes from a different place than your addicted world. It's lightness. It's joy. It's release. It's powerful and beautiful and breathtakingly amazing. It's freedom. And it's worth those horrible early days and it's worth the crying and the whining and it's worth everything you've been through because it feels absolutely magnificent. Then freedom is much more than a word...it's that gift that you've heard about and always wanted but never thought you'd reach.
The gift of freedom. Precious. Worth everything. Absolutely irreplaceable.
So wherever you are right now, know that you have a gift waiting for you on the other side of addiction. It's there. I promise you.
Sheri
