braintissue

Ever felt like somehow God forgot that you were part of the world and that it was never fun that you go through what you go through?

It was never meant that we were supposed to suffer without learning something about that suffering we went through. Hello, I am the Black Sheep of my extended family. And it’s OK, because somebody has to do it. Why not me?

Why not you?

As Black Sheep we are prone to accepting our fate as the ones who go through it all, and by this I mean that we go through things with those people in our extended families that at the moment we are going through it we feel that we have had some sort of dirty joke played on us by God. We have not.

Instead, we have been chosen by God for our strength, our candor, our gifts of the spirit and the heart and the mind. Our passion is great, our drive is unmatched, and like a battle worn soldier, we realize our own greatness in small doses instead of a gluttony of pats on the back that mean nothing.

There are going to be a few people who will email me or post a comment to this who will have the audacity to tell me that I am wrong about this, but I am not. We who’ve been branded with this label know that we are the ones who have been made this way because we can handle it. It might seem that we are tied to the proverbial whipping post, but the truth is that all Black Sheep have many characteristics in common.

We are sensitive with our words when sensitivity is called for. We understand the idea that sometimes you gotta hurt and we know that always, always, always, there is a place in the world for us, even though there may not be a place where we fit into our family quite right. And maybe, just maybe, after we have thought about it for a little while, we end up being grateful that we never did fit in. Grateful because there will come a time -more than one time- when it is the strength we have been granted by God which we impart onto those who have deemed us as this, the Black Sheep of the family.

While it may seem that our families and everyone within that group are busy telling us what they think of us, telling the world what they think of us and telling other people who we are in relation to their own greatness, we fall into that area where we are greeted by a greatness that is all our own. Our light shines brightly through the dismal place called being the Black Sheep. It is not a place where those weakened by the opinions of others matters, not at all. Be glad for your place. Be glad for your strength, your tenacity, your Divine Nature of Spirit and Soul.

It is not a dismal place, although there are times when it seems it is. It is how you, how I, how we have always handled the world from our corner of it. We are not bad, we are not wrong, we are not what the rest of the world of regular people have labeled us as being. We are not the label, we are the person who has been chosen to wade through the murkiness of human emotion in such a manner that we make being who we are, though hard to do, seem almost glamorous, beautiful, dare I say - easy?

The Black Sheep are the ones who endure what we do with grace, with a measure of strength that many do not possess, and because of our place in the world, in the hearts and minds of those who indeed do love us, even as we are judged for who we are thought to be, we are the ones for whom the lessons in life are not lost on. If there is anything that a Black Sheep knows all about, it is about the lessons in life which we are served up. Our lessons are challenging, but we muddle through them, one by one, getting stronger and stronger as the days and the assumptions of who we are fade away like so many memories of yesterday. We are the ones who were laughed at, mocked, told that we are not good enough, done wrong to, lied about. Yet we remain the ones who stand remaining, our heads held high, not only with pride but in utter defiance of all that has been given to us as a means to make us crumble. We are the warriors, the troopers, the ones for whom the bells toll constantly but toll like music to our ears.

We are artists and writers and dancers, musicians and poets and geniuses, but we are not recognized for more than our strength which is named arrogance and nonconformity and outright and straight up lack of concern for those who have placed themselves in that place of being marked as “correct.” We are told that we cannot do what it is that we know we are meant to, and we are told that there are ways of being that do not resonate with the things that we hear all the time from the people who tell us this, that and the other. The bottom line is that all that stuff does not matter to us, the Black Sheep of the world. This is not to say that there are people in this life who do not know suffering, sorrow and pain, because that would show a severe lack of an understanding of life and the lessons contained within it.

Though we may from time to time become a mess of falling tears, we never fall to our own demons. We fail, but we do not quit. We keep marching even as our feet are sore, our legs wobble with exhaustion, our heads hang and our shoulders droop beneath the weight of our world. Through it all, we are the ones to see the light before the dawn, the ones who hear the song of the muse when all others only hear the gnashing of teeth and the wailing from the pain and bitter suffering the world knows to give to us all through a toothy, menacing smile.

There is nothing like being loved, but there is nothing better and more rewarding than being Loved for Who You Are, and if You are the person described in this writing, then know that You were chosen specifically for this battle called your own Life and that in the end, the spoils of war are Ours!

Hold Your Head Up High. Glorify in the battles, and smile through the adversities. Feel blessed that you can do these things without having the regrets caused by the untruths spoken in your name. Be glad for your place in the world, my friend.

You earned it.

I LOVE YOU ALL

MAPU

Roxanne Cottell is a freelance writer who calls Helendale, CA home. She is married with three children. For copies of this writing or to contact her directly, please send an email to revrkcottell@yahoo.com

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