June 21, 2011
There is something to be said for the ground of stability, even it is unhealthy soil. There is just some sense of security in “the known”. But that’s about where the something ends. There is absolutely no real security in anything that is slowly killing you inside. At some point, you’ve got to face reality that in order to really live the way you’re meant to live, you’ve got to make a change.
Change is a scary thing, even when you know you want it, even when everything inside is calling you to make it. On some level you know it’s going to shake up some dirt and there goes your sense of stability, your false sense of security. Something inside you just doesn’t easily allow you to comfortably and peacefully make the change. Perhaps its procrastination, perhaps it’s the fear of “the unknown” or perhaps it’s your intuition telling you now is not the right time.
All the agony you’re trying to avoid by making a change… the fear… the potentiality of regret… the affects to other people… those aren’t the real things that keep you in agony. All the thoughts of “what ifs” and all the self-sacrificing in the world to insure the ground of stability is not compromised for others isn’t what keeps you in the state of discontentment. No. The agony… the lack of peace… the state of continual turmoil… is nothing other than you NOT answering the call placed upon your heart to make a change.
Sometimes you know it long before you get up the courage, but you don’t really want to know it. You ignore it and deny it as much as you can. You question yourself continually. You engage in long, windy discussions about it, but you do nothing. Even still, because you’ve recognized it on some level, you find no sense of peace in doing nothing at all. You just agonize internally.
The truth is… you know it; you’re just not prepared to know it. You feel it; you just don’t want to experience all the feelings you may have to face in making a change. You wait… hoping for the precise moment when it’s going to be simple, easy, and you’ll feel the least amount uncomfortable, but that day may never come.
There aren’t too many changes that are as easy or simple as changing your underwear. There are very few changes that feel as good as putting on fresh, warm clothes from the dryer on a cold day. The time you take in between the recognition that you need to make a change and when you actually make it, is really nothing other than you… trying to control it.
The reality is… what feels the most uncomfortable is existing in your own skin when everything inside you is telling you that you MUST make a change and you don’t listen to that call. At some point, it just becomes unbearable NOT to make the change. Like a plant that’s outgrown its container, you feel constricted. You know in your heart that you’ve exceeded the limitations of what you will accept for the conditions of your life. No amount of watering or fertilizing seems to help.
The longer you wrestle, ponder, agonize and sit in that uncomfortable space waiting for the right moment, the more you start to die inside. The root of your life… who you’re meant to be, how you’re meant to live, of WHO YOU ARE starts to corrode. You wither and people see it in you.
Just before you’re ready to completely keel over and die, you experience the moment… the shift. You let go of control and you surrender.
Suddenly, all the pros and cons of making the change disappear. It’s all pro and grow through the change or else let the shred of life that’s left of you go away completely. The peace you’ve longed for is suddenly there even though you may be in for one of the biggest transplants of your life. You consider the fact that you may lose a few of your precious roots in the process, but there is no fear because everything inside you seeks to preserve that one major root…your own life… the only one you’ve been given.
You then know… you then feel… you then experience the empowering conviction that now is the time. You look back at all the agonizing and all the waiting for the right moment and you realize that there never even would have even been a struggle to begin with if the change wasn’t needed. We just don’t struggle when we are content with “what is”.
So if you’re struggling with making a change, you can ask yourself all the questions, you can talk-talk-talk, you can sit in the fear of shifting into the unknown, you can wait all you want to, you can attempt to control the change as much as you wish, but hopefully one day you will surrender as I have.
Don’t worry… if you don’t like the outcome, you can surrender again.
The Calling 