“I have no more fight left in me.” These were the words spoken by a friend that led me to a new understanding, an Aha moment.
How many times had I pushed against life, resisted change and exhausted my energy fighting life. A lot is the unfortunate answer. Here I was challenging the “What Is,” spending my time swimming upstream as the river of life tried its best to carry me forward.
Why on earth would I do such a thing, why create a fight? Why challenge the grand plan?
Into the Wilderness
I have contemplated this question for the past month to discover that the past is familiar and what I know and understand. Life before the “change,” whatever the change, is unfamiliar and often scary. It asks us to step into the dark and find the light.
It may feel like you have been dropped into the wilderness and you are trying to make your way out. It will require that you look for resources to sustain you, gather firewood to keep you warm, build a shelter from the wind and rain.
You can sit in the forest and beg and pray for it to be different, you can fuss and fight with the what-is, or you can look around you and recognize your resources. Gather your firewood, build a shelter to dwell in, seek out sustenance to feed you. You can accept the what is and begin the journey of living in it. Once your basic needs are met, you can sit in the shelter and once again beg and pray for it to be different, to be rescued from this new place, or you can venture out and see the new terrain before you. You can choose to enjoy this newfound “wildlife” or you can continue the fight of wanting to get back to what was. You cannot win that fight, but often we try to anyway.
We hold onto the rope of the past with a strong hand until we have rope burns. It can be difficult to release the rope and trust that you will have stable footing where you are, but the process of holding onto the past will take all your energy and have you literally living in the past.
Dig Deep, Grow Strong
Acceptance of the what is, of the wilderness, of making your way through it, will bring forward all the beauty you hold. You will begin to dig deep into the resources within you and use them to build a new life. You will be fed by new experiences and find renewal in them.
Life is happening for us and not to us. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world. We give up the fight and are reborn again and again through the beauty of acceptance.
We find that we are more than capable. We find our courage and move forward with great tenacity. We recognize the gifts we have been given and begin to understand that the wilderness, the very scary dark wilderness that we were dropped into, was the great source of our growth and provided literally the rich soil in which we began to cultivate our souls.
Know that all paths merely led to you. Both open fields full of sunlight and dark wildernesses are part of the journey. Stop the struggle and revel in the acceptance of what is. Let the river of life carry you forward, begin to enjoy the ride. Let go of the what if’s and the what was, and start celebrating the what is!
Copyright 2018 Melody White. All Rights Reserved.
Learning to Live with Your Heart Wide Open 