I recently had another epiphany. I say "another" because it seems that lately I've had all sorts of "ah-ha!" moments regarding my life and myself. This one came to me as I was driving down the road after a much-dreaded appointment had finally concluded. I suddenly felt as though a ray of sunshine had burned its way through a bank of clouds to shine full upon me, and a chorus of angels began to sing directly to my heart. It was an uplifting moment, and I've been riding the joy-wave since.
As you know from my previous post, things have gotten hairy for my little family recently. I lost my job and still haven't found a replacement. In spite of numerous pleas to the universe in general, my bills keep arriving in the mail like clockwork. (Someone out there has a job that they take very seriously indeed.) My daughter and I had to go before the Truancy Review Board because she missed so many days at the beginning of the school year (for valid reasons, which I may go into at a later date.) All of this madness has occurred halfway through my first ever experience living in my own place (look, Ma! I'm independent!), and to say the very least, it has been stressful.
Ok, stressful does not quite cover it, and it's important that you understand where I have come from. My daughter, who is brilliant and beautiful and who almost never gets emotional about anything, finally went off on me one night after yet another of my anxiety attacks and told me what a hell it has been living with me. This is a person who has been with me through everything since I was 19. She's seen it all. She knows how I was, who I am, and what I've become. I respect her, I value her opinion, and as strange as it may seem to say this about your own child, I want her approval. To hear her express what a cracked up pain in the ass I had become really made me think. (It also pissed me off, but hey, I'm only human.) So I added 'being a disappointment to one of the best people I know' to the list of pressures building steam in my head, and of course, promptly had another tantrum. She was right - living with me was a nightmare, for me as well as for her. I felt like hell, bouncing continually through my range of feelings like some sort of perpetual e-motion machine. The best I could achieve at any given moment was to tell myself, "This too shall pass. Everything will be okay," and then try to believe it, which I didn't. I might have a moment where the anxiety seemed to subside a bit, I could breathe, and I could hope - and then my car would overheat or the coffee pot would refuse to work and it would push me into a downward spiral of misery.
Then, the moment. I remembered something I read many years ago that has influenced my beliefs a great deal: A book titled Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsh. It was the first in a series, and there were parts of that book that made me feel so comforted that I actually cried - just like when I read The Shack. There are many great things that I've taken away from that particular book, but my epiphany was based on this one: Humans are three-part creatures, comprised of Mind, Body, and Soul. The Soul is the part of God that resides in us - it is how God experiences Himself through us. The Soul has a purpose, a plan, a goal at any given time - what it wants to experience. Our greatest moments of strife occur when our minds do not understand our soul's intent and we fight against ourselves. Allow me to illustrate:
I am a smart person, very intelligent, very creative, very loving. But I have never had to struggle in life, not even as a single mother. I have been blessed to have wonderful parents and an amazing sister, as well as supportive friends and even co-workers who have made my life relatively easy. Because I have never had to struggle, there is a part of me that believes I can't be taken seriously as an adult. How can I say that I am a grown-up if I've never really had to deal with anything? I have always wondered, as I moved from relationship to relationship, into and out of my parents' home - could I do it on my own? Could I survive? Could I provide for my children alone? I believe that my soul is on a mission to answer that question. My soul wants to struggle, it wants to know what it feels like to dance on the edge of uncertainty, to flail wildly with pinwheeling arms on the lip of the chasm of failure. And my mind, which understands that the edge of failure is not a secure place to be, has been fighting tooth and nail to keep me from having this experience.
But my soul doesn't want to stop at experiencing the struggle, no! I have always believed that I have the ability to survive, that I can handle anything! My mother didn't raise me to fail. My father didn't raise me to shirk responsibility. And my soul isn't half-formed, it's a fully realized fragment of The All. Herein lies the grace: I see what it is that my Soul is doing now, and I have stopped fighting. I am happily accepting that this is where I am, that I am not meant to struggle forever, and I am not meant to fail. I am in the process of realizing my full potential, I am in the process of fully experiencing Who I Am. I will explore this period of uncertainty and discomfort with curiosity and joy, take from it the pain and the fear that I am meant to comprehend finally, and bask in the sure knowledge that I will survive - that I will thrive. I will dance upon the waves with a joyful heart, because this is exactly where I am meant to be.
I also understand that there is a gift in this turbulent period: I have time to write. It is my lifelong dream to write a novel, and so I shall. After years of doubting myself, of thinking I had nothing to say that anyone would be interested in reading, I now know that the story is within me. I look forward to the journey and the process of giving the world something lovely and fulfilling to read someday. I hope that anyone who is struggling right now can find a space to ask themselves, out loud as they drive down the highway, "Am I choosing misery? Is my soul choosing to experience this?" If your soul wants it, then so be it! Don't fight - relax, be calm, and know that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
Love and Regards,
Allison
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