Living out the year without fear has taken form time and time again. Even offering amazing surprises at every turn.
My favorite.....
It is true. When you put something out into the Universe, when you say I am standing at this juncture and this is where I am, movement and vibration and shift begin to happen. In six weeks; I have lived more, completed more, started more, cried more, screamed more, laughed more, hid more, duck and covered more, paused more, questioned more, bothered friends, family and therapist more then ever before. Ok, maybe not ever before but darn close.
Back to the words "my favorite" I have watched the journey transcend my life and touch the lives of those I know and love and those that I have never met. It doesn't get much better than this folks. A pebble is thrown into a pond and the ripples start forming.
I have a child with some very significant learning difficulties. Now that he is getting older, he is very aware of the fact that he can't quite read or write at the level of his classmates just yet. The beginning of the school year was traumatic for him. We sat quietly. We snuggled and shared lots of love. We entered into meditation and postures to calm and relax him. We lived through tears. (I haven't been the only one crying.) We lived through fights over homework. We lived. Then he came home one day. Beaming. What were his words to me, "Mom, I faced my fears." What would come out of his mouth, and then not too much later when an email from his teacher appeared in my inbox stating the entire story, was amazing.
He had read. He had read new words without assistance. Then he wanted to read them to the entire classroom. There's no way within a whole blog post I could express how monumental that was, let alone a few sentences. This kid was beaming. He had faced his fears and he had won!
I haven't talked much about this experiment at home. It is only on its sixth week. I wanted to take it step by step. But here was this 9 year old shouting out, "Mom, I faced my fear." He had read in front of a class of his peers who he knows reads better then him. And man... did these people celebrate him. His teacher, principle, aid, and peers..... It was a banner day!
Now here's the thing. Did his learning difficulties leave his life? NO. They did not. But fear began to ... more than anything, he stepped into the arena and said to the giant, "here's my stone."
What were my stones these two weeks?
More than I could account for.... Hence the missing post from week 5....
I faced a project I had been putting off for 6 months and in one week was done from start to finish. I lifted boxes, threw out garbage, made more trips to the dump then I care to think about.. but from one Thursday to the next I stood upon ground and I remained standing.
Let's not be frivolous about fear or change or life. This isn't some mega church program I am trying to sell you. I am not some pumped up, change your life, all is easy and prosperous cheer leader standing on a stage telling you to face your fears. Matter of fact, do you remember the posts where I wrote about the days before the year without fear. What I want to say more than ever now, six weeks in, take the time.. go slow, this journey isn't easy. Take time to really look at your life, what you want and what you don't and what it is going to take to get there.... What you think it will take, take that.. now pause. Really think about where you are, and where you want to be and what stands in the way... the journey from A to B, will take everything you have and then multiply that by (well, I honestly don't know what to tell you.) Realize it will take more than you ever imagined.
Step anyway................
For on that second Thursday, when the project was all done and everything was picked up and completed.. I stood. Yes, I did. Because that is what I have set my heart to do in this season. Having done all I can do I will stand at the end of the day. I will stand. I will show up time and time again, saying.. I have done what I can do and now I will just stand. (There's a favorite Christian passage in their holy text that says, "having done all stand." Another translation will say "firm." Having done everything I can do, I will stand firm.) I stand firm on the fact that this journey is hard, it is taking more from me at times than it has given back yet, but still I stand. Some days taking ground, some days giving it back.... only then to take it right back to myself again and again and again.
Back to that Thursday. I stood. I stood as I watched the same truck and actually the same driver come and pick up a storage unit (3 years later) that had once held hope of something that wasn't meant to become. You see what the mega church, prosperity only message people don't tell you.. is that sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes you stand in the gap that is left when the trailer and the truck pulls out leaving empty earth behind. And at that moment, there is no hyped up message that can get your fires lit. There is only ache, there are only tears, there are only moments to stand alone in silence.
One must stand and grieve. A good portion of that process will happen in quiet, out of the way places.. standing alone.
This current weekend is fascinating to me. A weekend that for me held newness and continued training, also held some very different things for different groups of people that have been in my life both in Virginia and in Charlotte, as well as in other places. A weekend rolled onto our calendars and into our lives. People who once had been in communities together enjoying and celebrating relationships were doing very different things. This weekend holds for me memories of other weekends, and moments and events that would roll out and change the lives of many. But this weekend also holds new beginnings this year... New faces, new ideas, new things to learn and experience....
To negate times, seasons, passageways negates what the human soul needs. There are moments needing to be remembered and lingered over and let go of... the process takes time. Living without fear for me in moments means seeing the calendar, not ignoring the dates forever stamped upon my remembrances, taking a deep breathe, touching grief and still putting a foot forward into the future and new dates and times to be had.
There are moments to pause and be silent. There are moments to remember and ache and be still. There are times I have awoken from the dream and found out that it was only a dream and it wasn't real. Or if it was real, having lived the dream it is time to wake up. Because there are also other dreams. There are also other moments to come and sing and shout and dance and do life and living. There is a time for mourning and then the dancing will come. There is a time for letting go and releasing. There is a time to receive. There is time to let the tears fall and let the body shake and let the hurt be and then there is a time to not so much dust oneself off (because living with the reminder and residue of that dust isn't such a bad thing) but a time comes when smiles will come back, the body desires to dance again and the hurt (which remains) doesn't cripple.
This year without fear, isn't without fear. I know I have said that before. This year without fear is about showing up. This year about fear is saying back to life, that I know it is changing. In some places it has changed forever and will continue to change. It is about admitting the weeks where fear gets to put a tally mark on its side. It is about admitting that some days my eyes ache for the old familiar; for old friends, for old places, for the known, for my aunt, for what I knew before...... Sometimes my heart lurches and I fall to my knees and I lay my head down and just let myself be. Because sometimes living a year (or a moment) without fear takes everything there is to be taken. It isn't all pretty. Sometimes new is exhausting. Sometimes the continual putting oneself out there into new places with new people is simply and profoundly exhausting and I touch the grief of having watched comforting familiar places pass away. Literally and figuratively. And then the exhilarating moments arrive too, what I have found is that in between exhaustion and exhilaration is a new normal. It is that first smile and first awkward "getting to know you" conversation. It is the first attempt to try something and watch it soar or crash but picking myself back up again, to show up again, to try again, to feel insecure again, to struggle with vulnerability again, to hate transparency again, to ask the questions again and again and again, to say the thank yous again.. and oh, those small smiles of appreciation passing them on again and again.
Gratitude erupts. I am grateful for those who I have journeyed with, I am grateful I had my auntie in my life for 43 years, I am grateful for the two plus decades of work and all the people within those days that brought me to where I stand today and I am grateful for the fact that no matter what any one day holds, the sun will always rise.
So when I say having done what I can do I stand. I plant my feet and with a resolute firmness I stand. I go to my knees and tuck my head and try to breath and I stay in that posture with a resolute firmness. I face week 7 and the rest of this year with a resolute firmness.
A year without fear isn't about living without fear... it is about living.
It is showing up and standing. It is saying to all the Goliaths out there... Here's my stone.
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