The sounds playing into my ears.
I would close my eyes and then I would open them.
When they were closed, I was in another world.
When they were open, they beheld a most amazing sky.
Blue as blue can be, white puffy clouds floating by.
I was naked.
I had jumped into the waters of this pond and it was amazing.
I was free.
Free for the moment as I began to learn how to touch the birthing of freedom for a life.
I most recently posted last year's picture.
Alongside I posted this year's picture.
But there's another picture still.....
So my first day of a year without fear... is this post... My goodness! It feels amazing, exhilarating and terrifying to look at the calendar and touch that it is Monday, August 17, 2015 and that in 365 days when it is Tuesday, August 17, 2016 I will have lived at least 520 moments of choosing life and action and not fear. All my what ifs are going to be transformed. Instead of fear based and hindrances they will be hopeful and liberating.
Ten things this week will be done. I haven't planned them out. A little over an hour ago remembrances of what it was like to float naked upon a lake, feeling the warmth of sunlight and beauty all around, started to make their way into my heart. I know the reality of those impressions. They are linked to an expression. Something I know I am to share. I am so familiar with those moments. It is my life to step into them.
I need not know what ahead of time the moment will hold, I have come to love the exploration of being led into the unknown. I haven't always. The predictable and the safe was what I wanted to carve out for myself. Trying to control something because I felt so out of control.
I was so terrified of the "what ifs." I let myself drown instead of float. I drowned myself in food or the lack there of, so that I wouldn't feel like I was drowning. I drowned myself in the constant spending of time in ministry and service so that I wouldn't have to sit still with self. I made sure I was always full or at other times ever so empty. Food was the metaphor. Whether stuffing or starving, I used it so that I didn't have to feel what I was really starving for, I used food so that I would be full of something and not feel so empty. I stuffed down all the emotions. I stuffed down the truest expression of me so that I wouldn't have to face what "me," had to face.
So to continue I need to share another photo and tell a story. For you readers who can't see me as I type, I just paused. I just closed my eyes. I just breathed in and I just breathed out. This next picture is hard for me to see and as I look at her, me, there's a place where the I that I was back then was so full and not of food and not of life. So full of fear. So full of pain.Full
I wasn't floating back then. A heavy weight had been dropped upon my gut and I was sinking. Do you remember what I wrote when I introduced you to the invitation of living a year without fear? I was saying good bye to shame, embarrassment, fear, humiliation. I didn't want to be hindered by those things anymore.
So this it... The next picture
and
then that story...
Withholding or gorging it was all to avoid. Avoid me. Avoid what was really weighing me down or avoid why I felt so empty. I could focus and fixate on something else so that I wouldn't have to focus.
I needed another way of living.
It was going to take me a long while to find it.
Thomas Edison has a quote.
Edison once said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
Just one more time...
Honestly I can't tell you I knew what I was doing, or where I was going, or how everything was going to end up? The hardest part of the journey was that I didn't know. The most transformative part of the journey was that in not knowing and in being afraid, I still showed up. I still believed that somehow, somewhere, someway there was something different for me and if I just didn't give up or stop, I would find the way. Maybe the better way to put it all was the way would fine me, or we would find each other. You see, I still don't know each step or what the 1000th step from now looks like. I'm learning to stay with this step. These days I'm spending time in silence and stillness and they are the re-writers and authors of new ways of thinking. It is wonderful and marvelous to behold.
Elizabeth Arden has this most amazing quote.( Can you tell I love words? Ideas? Expressions?)
To achieve Beauty, a woman must first achieve health.
My journey towards health has been one towards self and discovery.
Again so little has to do with the actual weight.
In a recent blog I wrote this statement.. "What is obvious would be the weight that was lost. What isn't as obvious but the same words could be used is the weight that was lost."
What's being lost now? Maybe I should ask that question in a different way. What's being gained? I've struggled to trust myself. While for others I could bank on my intuition and insight, for myself there only was immense doubt and fear. For others I could pour out compassion and empathy. For myself there was extraction and harsh criticism. That is the truest difference between the picture of me making a Mexican meal, and the picture of me a few days ago as I sat in the sun.
Performance has given way to peace.
The physical pounds of weight are really irrelevant. The immense weights that laid upon my heart, stealing my breath, crippling my soul.. those were the "gremlins" that needed to be seen, touched and met. I avoided meeting them. Suffocated pain and ignored my body and what it was trying to tell me. I stayed busy. I kept going. I kept stuffing everything down. Stuffing down or denying and living on empty. This is so not about food. Touch the metaphor.
What do you stuff down?
Where do you live on empty?
What are you full of that you are so afraid to see? What do you want to full of?
What do you not want anyone to know about you?
What do you wish you didn't even know about yourself?
I was a prisoner in my body, in my mind, in my heart...
When I let myself go and told myself I could be free that's when I started to live...
The suffocating weights that bound all my insides up were going to meet breathe, and that introduction would change all things.
Yeah I went skinny dipping. I would do it again. Floating upon the waters, as my senses came ever so awake and aware, I felt alive. I felt alive in me, in my body.. My spirit soared and my heart laughed as the skies and the clouds and the birds and the fish and the frogs all joined in a chorus celebrating freedom.
Elizabeth Arden said, "To achieve Beauty, a woman must first achieve health." Well, I am determined to live a beautiful life. I float now. Sometimes naked. Sometimes while I'm walking barefoot down the street. I want to live in health not stuffing down or restricting intake. I want to take it all in and live... I feel now. Instead of stuffing I release and instead of restricting I saw welcome in. Fear still tries to remind me that posts like this one put me so far out there.... And what I say to fear is that this post is just number one for the week, for the year... There's at least 9 (or 519) more to come... I'm so curious as to what they will be.
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