I’m driving down the road and I notice this deep stillness inside that I never felt before. The stillness is laying on a sea of joy and light. Each breath inviting in more life and each moment filled with curiosity. What is this feeling? The calm amid the storm we call life. Nothing has changed, not my finances, or troubles. They all still sit before me enticing me back into the darkness. But the light is too bright now and the darkness doesn’t stand a chance in this moment. A stillness so pure that the chaos doesn’t touch it. What is this feeling?
Memories begin to flood in of a baby girl. The one I faced in my memories just last month. A week of intense therapy like none I have experienced before. This baby girl. So beautiful, fun and sassy. There it is. The feeling is love. A love that has no worries or fear attached to it. One that I can sit and feel and be and breath. Not the love for a child that comes with responsibility and fears of loss or harm. Not the love for a man that comes with impending heartache. A love so pure it breeds life!
True love changes us. This love has changed me. It has allowed me to walk away and hold on all at the same time. It has left me with more understanding and more confusion than I have ever known. A new place and a new vision to experience the world through. A place with solid ground to place my feet and yet a newness that brings its own anxieties. This journey doesn’t end. There is no finish line of perfection. Just a new day with another chance to do better than I did the day before. Have I arrived? I fear I felt I had for a moment or a day. I have arrived nowhere. This path is one in white that never ends, full of whirlwinds and bumps and holes and beauty and love and heartache. I wouldn’t choose any other path. Certainly not the one I came from.
Where do I go from here? As my worldview shifts and changes each day feels fresh and new. This life becomes less a burden and the excitement I felt as a child of what is to come sneaks in. It slowly seeps in from the bottom of my feet, driving me forward, up into my heart, leaving it soft and open, and then into my mind, allowing my thoughts and choices to be clear and thoughtful. A place that is less reactive and more intentional. This is the place I want to dwell.
The anxiety returns and I take a breath and breathe back into that stillness I felt driving in my car. That love for me that I didn’t know I needed. A love that I avoided foolishly believing it would breed selfishness and instead breads selflessness. The work is not over. All relationships take cultivating whether, love or family or friendships. I see this one must also. Placing boundaries to keep me on this path means making the hardest of choices I never could before. Now I can. They hurt. I hurt. A deep pool of sadness wells up within my chest. But this time it is not full of the past. It is full of the moment and facing deeply all it takes to move one step further down the path in white that never ends and leads to everything.
Until Next Time
Jill
