Article 2: Whatever Good May Come

“We can’t change the past, but we can gather up its lessons and move on, stronger and wiser. We can’t control the future, but we can send our dreams ahead of us to help prepare the way.”

People ask me how I lost 240 pounds. They want the practical answer — the fasting protocol, the food plan, and the herbal supports. Those answers are coming. But before we get there I need to tell you about the work that made all of it possible. Because the body does not release what the soul has not yet processed.

This is the story of how I found my freedom.

The Question I Could Not Answer

For years I wrestled with a question I could not resolve. Why does a God of love allow innocent children to be abused and hurt? Why doesn’t a Father who claims to love us step in and stop it?

I had lived that question from the inside. I was not asking it theoretically.

For a long time, I accepted what Paul the Apostle wrote — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” I filed the question under things I would understand later and kept walking.

But I kept walking and kept asking until one day, somewhere in the long middle of my healing journey, the answer began to take shape.

The Gift I Did Not Ask For

I believe the Father has given each of us free will. We can choose to be evil if we like. We can choose to hurt others. By allowing free choice He has permitted that evil, pain and suffering will exist in this world. But knowing this would have to be, our Father of love also designed that our trials would be our teachers. Our biggest hurts our biggest gifts.

That is not a comfortable theology. It did not come easily to me. It was not handed to me in a moment of inspiration. It was forged over decades of confusion and pain, years of being misunderstood by everyone including myself.

The men who came so selfishly into my young life, stealing my childhood while they ripped my young soul to shreds, will one day stand before the Judgment Bar of the Almighty and face what they have done. That is not my burden to carry. What I carry instead is this — their acts, when filtered through the love of my Father, have become a wonderful gift.

It has taken years to grow into and open this gift. The Father alone understood the path I was walking. He continued to enable me to go the way I had to go. Throughout the years of confusion and pain He was filling me with something I could not yet see or name. It was being delivered to my soul piece by piece, set up and waiting for the time I would be able to open it and become the woman God intended me to be.

Learning to Forgive

The altar of forgiveness is not a comfortable place to kneel. The stones are hard. The question unavoidable — Can I forgive?

Forgiveness must be a gift, freely given. It cannot be earned and is seldom deserved. It must come from a place of understanding and love. The one being forgiven need not ask for this gift. Forgiveness is first and foremost a gift to myself.

In my life I have needed to forgive myself the most.

I have learned to forgive the men who stole my innocence, to feel no anger or bitterness toward those who robbed a lifetime of possibilities from me. Not because they deserved it. Because I deserve it. I can allow them to be human beings with their own stories. I am not their judge or jury; I am simply the survivor of their choices.

I have forgiven my parents — a mother who valued her friendships with depraved souls more than her children’s safety, a father who should have flown to the stars but was held down by a past he could not rise above. They gave me all that they had to give. It left me broken, but I decided to heal.

Holding onto old injuries hurts no one but me. I could not forgive myself until I began to understand and love myself. Love is not based on an ideal of what a person should be, but on the truth of who they are right now.

The Castle on the Hill

During a weekend intensive on personal empowerment I participated in a guided meditation that has stayed with me ever since.

I watched myself walk up a grassy knoll toward a castle. Passing through a massive door standing ajar I entered a large dimly lit room. As my eyes adjusted I began to make my way toward what appeared to be piles of discarded things. A favorite childhood sweater. A small pink music box with a ballerina with a broken arm that still played its tune when I opened the lid. Memories stored safely in stone walls strong enough to hold them.

As I turned to leave, the fading light fell on one last pile just inside the archway. My arms reached out before my mind caught up. There, lying motionless and silent, was a baby girl. She had been tossed aside, discarded. I knew this child instinctively. I had seen those eyes before — wide open and full of fear.

As I gathered her safely into my arms we melted into one.

In a second meditation that same weekend she appeared again, this time about seven years old. She sat outside the house of the old man who had raped us. In the past when she visited my dreams I had felt contempt toward her. I had not cared for her and she had not trusted me.

This time was different. As I saw her sitting there all alone with no one to share her horrible secret with, my heart filled with compassion. I finally understood why she had gone back to his house — she craved love and attention. She was just a little girl. It was not her fault.

I reached out for her hand as I had many times before. For the first time she took it and walked away with me.

The Prayer That Changed Everything

Somewhere in the long middle of my journey, I learned a prayer that became the title of my life.

When you cannot yet see the blessing in what has happened to you — when the wound is too fresh or too deep to find gratitude — simply say: “For whatever good may come of them.” And mean it.

When you believe, you release a power into your life that is able to transform the most devastating experience into your greatest blessing. You will be able to say honestly that you would not choose to return and change these things. That because of the gifts they carry you would choose this road again.

I would choose this road again.

Not because the abuse was acceptable. It was not. Not because the losses were small. They were enormous. But because of who I have become by walking through it. Because of the thousands of people I have been able to sit beside in their own pain and say — I know. I have been there. And there is a way through.

Those men took more than a little child’s trust. They stole her life. The Lord has turned it all into a huge gift — one for me and one for me to share with others.

Personal Freedom

A good portion of my life was spent in victim mode, accepting responsibility for the wrong choices of others, reacting instead of living. Personal freedom came as I developed boundaries. I now understand where my responsibility ends.

Personal freedom is the ability to choose instead of react. It is getting up in the morning free to make good choices all day long. It is going to bed at night knowing I have broken no personal vows to myself.

This is real personal freedom. This is really living.

And it was this freedom — hard won over decades — that finally prepared the ground for what came next. The body had been waiting for the soul to catch up. By late 2016 I was close enough to ready that new life could finally take root.

Peace & Faith by Dara Dietz

We can’t change the past but we can gather up its lessons and move on, stronger and wiser.

We can’t control the future but we can send our dreams ahead of us to help prepare the way.

We can live each moment, heart and soul, and cherish this day’s greatest gift — the gift of now.

May peace with the past and faith in the future gently guide you through each precious moment of today.

Dara D. Dietz is co-founder, with her husband, of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private natural healing association serving an international membership since 1998. She is the author of Whatever Good May Come (2009) and resides in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.