..to prove to ourselves...

All prepared and ready we waited at the gates, waiting for the journey to begin.

Full of hope, enthusiasm, energy and confidence, hungry for honour and glory. Convinced that all things necessary had been packed.

The road was not difficult, but time took its toll. Time began to corrode us. There were things we were never ready for, faults that we never knew began to chew us apart.

We adapt, we changed, convinced that we came out better than before.

But after this we stood still, while others forged ahead together, creating new laughs and capabilities.

In search of comfort we made mistakes. Isolation prevented us from knowing these were mistakes until it was too late.

Until we passed the tipping point, we were left even more alone.

Left alone, time slowed even more. The laughs we never wanted to be part of now began to tear us from within.

It was not loneliness or isolation eating us. It was the fact that we made the mistake that caused the pain.

Others with a lot less can thrive a lot better than us during this march. How did we end up this way?

God was always with us. We just made the wrong choices.

Surely we have misused the graces that God has given us?

The other end is slowly creeping into sight now, as the road nears its end.

From now till the end, of course we can hang on, but times will be tough.

It is ironic that we have the ability to see through others, but are blinded when we try to look into ourselves.

What is it that blinds us? Pride? Self-denial?

The greatest of pains always comes from within, and not from the outside. It makes the challenges coming from the outside a lot more difficult to bear.

But the sight of the end will spur us on. We will finish this road and look forward to whatever that lies ahead.

Not forgetting to learn from these mistakes we have made, and not make them again when the next phase of our journey begins.

Life is painful, but through pain we learn.

Through pain we grow and through growth we pain no more.

Because we are pass the tipping point, what changes we can make now will have very limited effects.

But we change not because we want to appease the rest, but because we want to prove to ourselves that we will not stay in the same flawed form forever.

That we are made of something and we can make the wrong right again.

Hope and we'll never go wrong. Keep going with the change and we'll never be wronged. Keep moving and we'll never find ourselves in the wrong places again.

Scars will heal, mistakes will be righted, and we will grow stronger.

We pain now, so we will never pain in the same way again.

That is my hope.