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September 15, 2004
Harvest moon
is coming! We're into the ascent
from New Moon to Harvest Full Moon and
what a wonderful harvest it has been.
I can't even begin to process all that
has happened in the past year. As
I look back over my journal archives
from a year ago, I'm surprised at how
sad I was. Eric was struggling
with his fledgling business, trying to
get it off the ground. I was
hiding in bed, depressed and not
cleaning my house (now I'm happy and not
cleaning my house). My grandmother
had just died, which brought up its own
set of challenges, especially with my
mother dying in January of that year.
We thought if we ever lost our house, it
would be because we couldn't make the
rent. What a surprise that it came
through the owner selling our rental
house.
It has been
such an amazing year. I never
would have dreamed a year ago that I
would be where I am now. I am
convinced that it's through the positive
thoughts of all of the dear people who
read this journal that we have been able
to get through the hardest times of our
life together and end up in such a good
place, literally and figuratively.
There are still definitely challenges to
face (I had to laugh when I read in the
September 16, 2004 entry that Eric had
been a butt nugget the weekend before,
because he had quite a hair up his butt
this weekend as well. Maybe it's
cyclic. :) Anyway, the hair
has been extricated and he is reborn
back into his usual loving, wonderful
self) and battles to win, but now, more
than ever, I am convinced that we are
all working unerringly toward our
greatest good at all times. When
we fight and fuss and cry and battle
against where the Universe is leading
us, our greatest good is still there,
waiting patiently for us, while we get
beaten to shit trying our best to get in
our own way. How many times have
we been shown again and again that a
relationship is bad for us or we need to
leave a particular job? We get the
spark, down in our gut that we need a
major change. That spark flames up
into our spirit and catches hold, then
hits our head and the excuses start.
"But I can't be without a job!"
"But I love him!" "But I'm
scared!" "What will I do if I
don't have this?" "How can I live
without..." and then it's pushed aside
for a while. We keep getting
bugged about it again and again, because
our heads can ignore the flame and even
turn down the flame, but the spark
doesn't die. We start to get more
and more signs that *this* (whatever it
is) is not where we need to be and we
either give in and take a chance or we
continue to ignore it while the urgings
grow and grow. If we continue to
ignore where we are being led, more
often than not, the situation eventually
explodes and choices are taken our of
our hands, inevitably landing us exactly
where we would have been had we listened
to that spark in the first place, just a
little more beaten, a little more shell
shocked and a little more disadvantaged.
People are
usually terrified to take a leap of
faith and leave a situation that appears
to be secure and necessary in favor of a
free fall. We instantly start
questioning and doubting ourselves until
we've talked ourselves out of taking
that step. We don't trust the
process or believe that taking a chance
can pay off. We're frightened.
We're intellectualizing the process.
We can't imagine what could possibly
take the place of what we'd lose.
I've been there a million times.
My relationship with Paul, my
ex-husband, is a perfect example of
this. I was given 10,000 chances
to leave. I was given 100,000
nudges to go. I was worried about
how the kids would handle it. I
was worried about how I'd get by
financially. I was worried that
I'd never be with anyone again. I
questioned it into the ground while I
would lie awake at night, propped up on
one elbow, watching him sleep and
wondering if I could kill him and
collect the insurance and not get
caught. Living with alcoholism
will do that to you. But I loved
him. I loved him truly, madly,
deeply. I shouldn't have.
But I did. When I look back now at
photos of him, I remember how much he
meant to me and how I would have gone to
the ends of the earth for him. It
still makes me feel sad. In the
end, he left me for someone else and the
divorce was NOT negotiable.
I ignored the urgings and ended up in
exactly the same place, just hurting
more than I would have if I'd left when
I first got the nudge. I was
furious that I'd given this much to this
man, only to be treated this way. I was
furious with the Universe for betraying
me like this. How could I know
that I was only year away from an
amazing love that was mutual and giving
and exciting? In my mind, I'd lost
everything. I'd invested all I had
and gotten a pile of shit in return.
It took a long
for me to gain enough perspective to see
that I'd been ripped from a situation in
which joy was not just elusive, it was
nonexistent with no hope of ever
growing. I could never be a good
mother, a good wife or a good ME
as long as I was with him. Because
I adamantly refused to acknowledge this
and bow out gracefully, so basically, I
was brutally extricated from the
situation and tossed out on my ass.
The situation
with our house was another. Eric
wanted to buy a house and I argued him
down over and over, convinced we needed
to have a year of stable employment
behind us before we became home owners.
That choice was yanked away when our
house was being sold out from under us,
we didn't have money for security
deposits and couldn't afford the
inflated prices of houses in our area.
This town kept calling us when we'd
never heard of it before we found it in
the real estate listings. I told
Eric, "Go find a house for me."
And he did. Despite 87,000 reasons
why it shouldn't happen and more than a
handful of times when it looked like it
should have bottomed out, it worked.
I've kicked and bitched and fought about
the isolation, the lack of stores and
movies and thrift stores, but you know?
I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and
I know it. I can feel it.
The spark is there and it cannot and
will not be denied. Eric's spark
was ignited not only by the feeling that
he'd "come home" when he first got here
and that this wonderful place had been
waiting for him, but by this:
That is the
only picture he took of the kitchen of
this house when he checked out the house
(which is likely a good thing since the
kitchen is roughly the size of a postage
stamp). 11:11 has been his lucky
number forever and it was right there on
the kitchen clock when he walked into
the kitchen. That's when he knew
that no matter what, the house was his.
We'd all be so
much better off if we'd work harder to
trust our instincts and live our lives
"on purpose," in harmony with our
hunches and the guidance of our spirit
rather than arguing it into the ground.
It's hard to really and truly have
faith. We can talk a good talk,
but when push comes to shove and it's
time to take that leap of Faith and
freefall into the black abyss, how often
do we back away at the last minute,
stammering out a laundry list of reasons
why we just can't take that chance?
We demand assurances of what we'll get
if we jump. Show me the net!
Show me what's on the other side!
Tell me the trade off? What will I
get if I give this up?
A friend from
my past used to say that a leap of faith
is when the Universe says, "Will you
give up everything for a promise of
nothing?" It goes all hard nosed
and refuses to give up the answers until
we have stepped off the edge and jumped
into the void empty handed and with
willing spirit, not out of desperation,
but out of trust and faith. Those
words are thrown around casually so
often, but few people really know what
to do when they are faced with a leap of
faith. It's hard to walk the talk
and truly trust that we're being led to
a good thing, even if it's in the dark.
Sometimes, what's coming is so wonderful
that we can't even conjure up its equal
in our minds. As humans, we think
too small and so it has to stay in the
dark until we're ready to know and
embrace and fully comprehend the gift we
are being given. I also think that
the more we are asked to give him, the
more wonderful the outcome will be.
Like the old saying goes, you can't put
new things into a full cup. Some
of the old has to spill out first.
I believe that is part of the concept of
sacrifice, that we have to be willing to
give up in order to receive. Out
with the old and in with the new!
I'm grateful
for all I have received this year and my
harvest has been plentiful. I am
particularly grateful to have some time
to rest from the years of financial
disaster and just "be" for a while.
Even though we only make enough money to
cover our immediate needs, it feels good
to be able to do that and not have to
worry about having enough money for food
and essentials. Sure, our car is a
piece of crap and threatening to dump
out on one of these king sized hills at
any time. Sure, we're "in the
market" for good health insurance, but
immediate needs are met and we are
working toward those other things.
One step at a time, one day at a time.
How do you eat
an elephant? One bite at a time.
:) Meanwhile, it's a happy harvest
with about 8 weeks still left to go!
A LOT can happen in 8 weeks and I'm
tremendously excited to see what it is.
Meanwhile, I
need to "sacrifice" in order to "gain"
by cleaning this house.
Personally, I think I need to make room
for a maid in my life. : P
Love,
K
 
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