This Month's Podcast Features our First Motivational Moment, commentaries on all things 40plus and fearless. Narrated by Enid Dillard, Executive Director of 40fyd+...
I read Iyanla Vanzant's Piece from Broken Pieces over 12 years ago. It remains one of my best reads because of the pure transparency, honesty and courage shared on each and every page. In this best seller, Iyanla Vanzant recounts the spiritual lessons learned-from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day. As an up and coming communications executive, this book made it clear to me that the struggles I faced and uncertainties that I felt within my career trajectory and life were not abnormal or unique to just me. It was a refreshing revelation to discover that even at the highest pinnacle we can be at our lowest spiritual selves. This excerpt sets the pace for our new podcast launched today entitled: "Hiding the Cracks of Our Best Lives"...
"It is often difficult to identify the exact moment that your life falls apart. In most cases, it is not a one-shot deal. If you ask most people who have had the experience of losing everything they love or believe in, they will probably say it was not one telephone call or one letter, one revelation or realization that caused the collapse of life as they knew it. I now understand that my life fell apart one piece at a time. Piece by piece; one experience, one situation, and one circumstance at a time, until I found myself standing in the midst of a heap of broken promises, splintered relationships, and shattered dreams. It is not a place I ever imagined I would find myself again, after I had gotten through it the first fifty or sixty times.
The breaking down into pieces of a life is a painful thing to watch and even more painful to endure. Even more devastating is that as your life begins to unravel, day by day, piece by piece, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. You see what is happening. You know what is happening. And, you want anything other than what is happening to happen. You see, somewhere deep inside, we all know that lives are not built to fall apart. That is just not what lives are meant to do. The lives we are given by God are meant by God to grow, to blossom and flourish. The reality is, however, lives do crumble.
I now realize that lives fall apart when they need to be rebuilt. Lives fall apart when the foundation upon which they were built needs to be re-laid. Lives fall apart, not because God is punishing us for what we have or have not done. Lives fall apart because they need to. They need to because they weren’t built the right way in the first place. I came to this realization one day, after many days, weeks, months, and years of trying to fix the cracks in my foundation. One day, one moment of time, as I sat helplessly surveying the broken pieces of my mind, heart, and life, I recognized that a broken life is a test of faith of the highest order." -Peace From Broken Pieces: How To Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant
Tune into the 40fyd Inspirational Podcast on Anchor.