Scars

 

I just saw a quote, that fell in love with me and doesn’t seem to want to leave my head. I don’t know where it came from, it doesn’t say or I could give it proper credit. “My scars are part of my story. They are reminders of how life tried to break me…..and failed.” I don’t often think about my scars, I’m well aware that they exist and I know the story to all of them. When that quote struck me I started thinking about why of all the things in life that I have been through, would these seemingly bad moments when something hurt so bad that it left a permanent mark to remind me of the pain, why would these be moments that I want to remember. Why would that moment need marked?

The oldest scar that I can remember getting is a tiny round one on my right hand just below my thumb. I’ve had that scar since I was about 6 years old. I got a wood splinter in my hand and it was so small that you couldn’t see It. I’m not sure how long it had been there when my hand became infected. I remember my grandmother was the one who found it, and she was the home remedy grandma, not the emergency room grandma. So she basically held me down and used a safety pin dipped in alcohol and lots of alcohol to clean out my infection. Again my mind wonders….why this moment? Who wants to remember this? I had so many amazing moments with my grandmother why did I have to keep this one? Maybe …..that moment was the moment where I developed a love for home remedies. Maybe, on a deeper level, that was the first moment that I experienced that level of compassion from someone. To love someone so much that you were going to help them even if they fight you.

Maybe I thought there is something to this scar thing, but maybe it’s not all pain like the quote suggests, maybe those scars are the greatest moments of love that you’ve experienced here?

Having never thought about this much before, this thought will need some more examining…..

My next set of scars that I remember are on my face, my lips to be exact. I crashed my grandfather’s ATV when I went up a steep hill that I had never tried to go up before. I always watched everyone else bravely ride to the top while I parked and walked up my uncles house. This day though I was out by myself. I pulled up to the creek beside which I would normally park next to when I would walk. I sat there for a few minutes and thought to myself that I knew I could make it to the top no problem. All I had to do was stand up just as I got through the water and throw my weight forward like everyone else did when they did it. How hard is that? That’s it I thought, today is the day. Tomorrow my brother will no longer be able to make fun of me for having to park and walk, tomorrow they would all know that I could do it to! So I started going really fast and got across the water no problem,  and the next thing I really remember is lying on my back and watching the ATV coming down on top of me. I was 12 I would have been crushed. The handle of the big bike hit me in the mouth, knocked out teeth, cracked others split my lips open in 2 places, and then instead of continuing to come down on top of me it rolled to the side and fell back down into the water.

After that, the next moment I remember I was spitting out teeth in the creek and trying to wash the blood out of my mouth with water. Then I walked the rest of the way to my uncle’s house ( this was in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors to see what had happened and long before cell phones), I went inside, got some washcloths and tried again to clean up and was able to assess the damage. I know I thought about calling my mom, but thought she was going to be really mad and my face hurt, my head hurt and my arm was really hurting, I didn’t feel like getting yelled at, so I decided to walk the mile home. As if somehow by walking home I was going to be able to hide the fact that I was missing teeth and my face was split open. But again, I was 12 so I know somehow this made sense in my head. When I got home my mom was gone, but my dad was there. He of course wanted to know what happened so I choked it out through a thousand tears. He told me to go lay down and that he would be back. He went to get my mom and see if the ATV could be taken home. My mom took me to the hospital where it turned out that I had a broken arm, needed 6 stiches in the corner of my lip and another 8 in the center of my bottom lip, and after all of that I was going to require multiple dentist visits that I wasn’t looking forward to. As I think about this I have to once again wonder, why this moment? With all of the good times that we had playing on those why is this one the main one that I had to keep? Maybe it was all so that I could learn that some things are dangerous and if I was always trying to keep up with the boys something really bad was going to happen. Or maybe, if you go a level deeper, then maybe this was the first moment that I had the experience that life is precious. One bad decision, could quickly take it all away. Once again I wondered if instead of what I always thought was such a bad thing, or even an ugly thing especially being on my face, maybe this to was love.

I could go on and on, as I have numerous scars, and I could tell you the stories of each and every one of them. How they came to be, which shoes I was wearing when I got a certain blister, what I am discovering about each one. How inevitably weather it was a moment that almost took my life, or a moment that changed my life like the stretch marks that line my belly I found a moment in there that was nothing but pure love. I could also go through the one’s that you cannot see with your eyes, I can only feel them with my heart. They are the inside scars the ones we carry for our loved ones no longer here, or for those that broke our hearts on the journey to where we sit today. Those also carry with them profound lessons and so much love. I could tell you about them all like I said, but I think you get the point.

They say that everything in life is love, that in the truth of everything that we have done or experienced, be it what we think is bad or what we think is good at the core of it when we look back on it there was always love there.   I’ll never look at my scars the same. Where there is love there is life, and that is what we are all covered up with….life! Now I think that the more scars one has is just how much they have lived, experienced and loved, and isn’t that the point?

I Can Get Up

 

 

     My favorite speaker Less Brown has a saying “If you fall down make sure you land on your back, because if you can look up you can get up.” I wish I had a good count as to how many times those few words have saved my life. Even during the worst of times when my daughter was a heroin addict and my whole family was coming apart at the seams. There were many mornings that I had to roll over on my back in order to remind myself that I could get up. There have been many days in the last few months that this has been uttered over and over in my head. I have noticed a difference this time though. This time I really knew in my heart that I could get up. This time I believed every word and as I uttered them I felt safe. This time my monkey mind that takes off racing with every imaginable worst case scenario didn’t take over, because I knew the truth in the statement “I can get up!”

     This has been a year for me that I assure you I will never forget. In a different way than one might think. It’s human nature to remember the bad times in our lives, but most people seem to believe it’s because they were the most traumatic. I no longer see it that way. Instead I think I will remember this particular tough time not because it was traumatic, but because why would I ever want to forget the things that have turned me into the woman that I am becoming. It’s kind of like if you get bit by a spider in a lab and become Spider Man….well that’s the kind of life changing thing you will want to remember. In my case it’s the same as becoming Wonder Woman, why would I ever want to forget the things that transpired so that I could claim my new identity?  

     At the end of the day this journey that I’m on has brought me to a place where I am changing every day. I am more grateful now than I have ever been, for both the things and the amazing people that I have in my life. Probably because I understand better than ever before what it is that’s important. I have more peace in my life than I have ever known, and in that peace I’m finding joy. Every day my universe expands and fills the day with better and better possibilities than the day before, and if I should stumble and fall I’ll know there is no reason to worry because I CAN get up!! 

In The Flow

 

     I’m not sure why I often find myself outside at night contemplating life. There’s something about looking up at the sky and wondering….well wondering a little bit of everything. Kind of like the cat on the railing above me as he’s looking up at the roof and wondering what’s up there. I wonder if when he jumps up on the roof his curiosity kicks back in as there is nothing obstructing his view of the sky now. Does he now ask the same question to the sky as he did the roof….what’s out there? If he could would he find a way to get to the sky only to discover the universe and wonder…what’s out there. That reminds me of what people do. Find the greatest thing in the world and all they can see is the next thing past it that’s going to be the greatest thing in the world. When will we just be grateful of the amazing right in front of us, and stop trying to find something better?  As long as we are always looking around the corner for something better we’ll never be happy.

     I’m not sure when that kicked in exactly, that loss of enthusiasm on the quest to more and better. All I know is that one day it just left. Not that I don’t of course want my life to continue to get better, I do. I just want it to be through a natural flow, not one made up of expectations and attachments to things that will always work out just the way they were meant to anyway. Being attached to something doesn’t give you any more control over anything, in fact in my case it generally gives me less. This is my favorite lesson in all of this, learning to just flow with life instead of always trying to swim upstream. Oh, and did I mention I can’t swim? That makes it tougher.

     I’m finding that as I just let go the story gets better. Everyday I’m brought everything I need, no struggle, no strife, just here you go, everything’s taken care of today. It’s almost like watching things in nature work. The wind blows and if the tree just sways with the wind then everything is ok, but the minute that tree puts up a resistance then its branches break. If you’ve ever seen John Travolta’s movie Phenomenon that’s the secret to life that he discovers, that everything is like the ebb and flow of the wind through the trees. If we don’t fight it, and we can be grateful for it then we never have to search for more and better because we always have just what we need and it’s always the greatest thing in the world.

     Lately that’s been my life, just blowing in the breeze. Seeing where today takes me, and wondering if I’ll find my way back. After all I have been forgetting to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to make it easy. My favorite thing about everyday lately is finding so many small moments that I like to take a mental picture of. I like to call them freeze frame moments. The kind where you’d almost like to climb into a bubble and float around in it forever. I haven’t always focused my attention on those kind of moments. I remember a time that I kept my focus on the moments that felt like quicksand. I wouldn’t trade the peace I feel inside for the adrenaline rush of the other. My motto for the moment is one day at a time, one moment at a time, one breath at a time it will all come together. Like the river flowing all the way to the ocean just like it was meant to be. 

The Sight

     I’m sitting here on a rock on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley and for whatever reason I’m reminded of the first time I ever got mad at God. Like really mad, like the kind of mad you get when you don’t talk to someone for years. When I was a little kid we had a good relationship, or well the kind the Churches’ make you believe is good. You know the kind where you wholeheartedly believe in Hell so you are scared to do anything wrong, because burning for eternity just doesn’t sound pleasant. So I used to pray every night, mostly for things like no floods, no volcanoes, no earthquakes, you know the kind of things all kids pray about. Then my grandma got sick and the nature of my prayers changed. I knew a lot for a kid and I always knew from things that I would over hear and the way all of the adults acted things were worse than they were telling us. You could see the sadness written all over everyone, but none like my Grandpa. One look in his sad eyes and you knew that things were grim. So the prayers became “please don’t let my grandma die”. I cried, I bargained….you know the “I’ll never be bad if you just let her live” kind of bargaining. We all do it at times of desperation when you know the only hope you have is if God almighty steps in and creates a miracle for you. There was no miracle, about 6 months after my Grandma had announced (as cool as you can imagine while peeling carrots) she had cancer. This is what started my rage at God.

     I’d like to say I got past it quickly, but anyone who knows me will tell you I’m stubborn. This was a grudge I was planning to hold onto, because obviously it has to be someone’s fault when bad things happen. So I figured why not blame God, and sure enough every time life threw a curveball that I found unfair or painful I chucked it at God. I know I’m not alone in this you hear people all the time when something bad happens saying things like “God must not exist”, or “God is cruel”. I find it ironic that the very things that lead you away from the belief in God are the very same type of things that bring you back to a relationship. There comes a point when you’ve been knocked to your knees hard enough, when you can no longer see anything in the situation except for God. To make a long story short I finally found my belief and lost my anger. It’s not the same type of belief that it used to be since my belief is no longer based in fear or in a God that is only there to judge and punish. I use terms like Spirit, Universe, and on occasion Goddess, they all describe the same thing to me. I discovered a God that is Love, nothing more, nothing less, just Love.

     So why am I reminded of this while sitting here enjoying the peace? I think it’s because sometimes you need to be reminded of how far you’ve come. Sometimes a memory is just there to remind you to always be grateful for every situation. It’s funny how if you try you can look back on any situation no matter how horrible at some point and find the roses that came from the thorns. Every event in our lives is there to teach us something, even death. Sometimes death no matter how unfair it seems can teach us how precious time is. We all know there really is only one true rule of life, it’s that none of us are getting out of her alive. So sitting here right now and seeing God in everything, every rock, every tree, and feeling God in the breeze that’s blowing through me reminds me of a time I couldn’t see that. So I close my eyes and say a silent thank you to Spirit for allowing me this kind of sight.

     

Episode 2: Finding What’s Real

 

Sometimes you have to lose everything to find yourself. I can’t remember where I heard that, but as I sit here tonight in my half empty apartment it keeps running through my head. It seems like I just moved and got rid of half my things. Yet the reality of I’m moving again and getting rid of the rest of my things is staring at me amongst all of the boxes. I know I should be completely freaked out right now, funny thing is there is such a calm about me ……..

     A few days later……

     It was a hot miserable day today so I’m sitting outside on my dear friends patio looking at the sky and hoping to catch a glimpse of one of those stars that you can’t see through the city lights, and I’m thinking, I can’t believe I really did it! I can’t believe I actually quit my job, got rid of almost everything that I own, gave up my apartment and am now relying on the kindness of my friends for a place to sleep. The part that is the most shocking is the knowing that I have never been this brave before. Certainly not brave enough to not be afraid. This time that little person inside my head that says “what the *#$% are you doing” hasn’t found it’s voice.  I can honestly say that in the best of times I don’t remember ever feeling this at peace. It has been amazing how swift and smoothly things are transitioning in and out of my life. Some days I can’t believe how quickly the things I need are being brought to me and how fast the things that no longer serve me are disappearing. I think this is the process they speak of when they mention “letting go, and letting God”. It’s faith for sure there is no doubt.    

     This story does have a warning for others however. Remember that saying your mother used to use….and yes all mothers used this one “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”. About a year ago I was sitting with my Life Coach and we were discussing how I could get better at letting people in…you know, like actually connecting with people in a real way. I laugh now at how a couple of times he would really want to do the facepalm, but instead would just look at me and say “this can’t be this hard!” Hardest thing I have ever done in my life coach! This of course was in the middle of a lot of hard things like moving out of the house that had been my home of 17 years, and quitting my job where I was secure and embarking on a new adventure. (Said new adventure turned out badly if you hadn’t guessed that) I have to say though that during this last year of my life I have made some of the best friends that I have ever had in my life, and learned how to connect with anyone almost instantly. That part of the journey I would have to say has been well worth it. Don’t get me wrong here I’m not saying that I’m cured and I’ve gotten completely over my whole letting people in thing. It still seems that those I would most like to let in are the ones that are the hardest to give a key to. Now I see myself still learning this lesson and finding myself learning to let people in, in a whole new way. I’m not sure if my coach would be proud that I’m doing it, or still shaking his head going “this can’t be this hard!” All I have to say for myself is apparently some people have to do things the hard way, and my parents often tell me that I’ve been hard headed since birth.

     Even with all of that I’m still at peace. I’ve come to the conclusion that the peace comes from finally having a clear vision of the things I want. It’s crazy how the universe works, get rid of everything you have so you can find what you want. For the first time I have a clear vision of the me I want to become. I feel like I have direction in a way I’ve never had it before. The difference in this one and the old one? This one isn’t about the pursuit of money. This vision is in pursuit of just being the best version of me that I can possibly be so that I can help others become the best versions of themselves. Sometimes you have to lose everything to find yourself…..or maybe that should read sometimes you have to let go of all the things you think are everything and go out and find what’s real. What’s real is our connections, not just to our family and friends but to all of the people that we meet every day. They all have something to teach us if we’re listening.