The Power Within

All of the sudden one day, my hand gave up.

In pain, I was unable to do most functions and had to stop using it altogether. I was a full-time, 5th grade classroom teacher. This just wouldn’t do. I needed my hand. Badly.

Though it healed and was usable again with some pain, I came face to face with a great fear. What if I’ve used up my right hand, what if all I’ve ever wanted to do was write and I’ve spent a life time teaching others to write, assisting them, until the magic of my hand was thoroughly used up on others and there was nothing left for me?

This is the plight of many a people. Giving always outwardly, sacrificing self, doing for others instead of for ourselves until finally life brings a blaring wake up call.

This is the way spirit works. We get subtle yearnings. Gentle knowings. Whispers in our ears. Until, one day, if we’ve ignored all the signs, we get overt, in-our-face, PROBLEMS.

My thumb was this catalyst for me. I began to take my energy, abilities and my creative hands seriously. I paused and listened to the messages within that said to me, it’s time, this has been great learning, I’ve given all I’ve got, and it’s not coming back to me in like kind, there is more. This was the call of my soul, the internal ignition that gets lit suddenly, as if encoded in our DNA, to turn on at a certain point.

I had to leave my job. Staying was not a choice. It was time for my Heroine’s Journey.

It is when I visit the depths of despair that I rise again in courageous, spiritual courage. This journey I am on is the Heroine’s Journey, as Joseph Campbell distinguished, after studying more than four-hundred myths from different countries, which all depict a story of the hero who heeds the call of the soul.

To ignore this call, the siren of the mystic within, is death. One must choose spiritual growth, and adventure, and cast off the bowlines and head into we know not where.

This call came for me in my seventh year of teaching public school. I was stressed, overweight, and my right thumb quit working.

This is the purpose of life: to evolve, to listen to the soul, the eternal, larger part of us. When we can honor ourselves as spiritual beings having a human experience and jump into the dark abyss trusting in a higher power, then we are initiated, we have crossed a threshold and will be used up by the divine.

My hand was a call, a warning- either I use my hands for my true purpose, or they will stop working.

Or, perhaps it is a warning saying, if you could no longer use your hand, would you be satisfied? Would you rest easy knowing you’d done with it all you desired?

I’m coming on six months of not working.

I’ve felt high-highs and low-lows.

It’s when I let the fears of others seep into my skin that I begin to feel heavy, and I question if I have it all wrong.

Inevitably, God answers my call. I am shown something via the words of others, a book, or a song, that reminds me of the inner will the urges me on. Of the strength and divinity within these palms and coursing these veins. Made up of pure miracles and magic, am I.

So, I dipped into a puddle of despair for a wee bit. I forgot that I am not in control. I began to question.

I felt the fear of ceasing to exist, of eradicating life as I knew it. Of shedding ground beneath my feet and then desperately scrambling to recreate it.

We are falling, all of us, flying through the cosmos, on a journey to we know not where, but we are on our way and the only way to fly is with pure, raw delight in the letting go and freedom that comes with flight.

Be the rushing river.

Be the wind through the trees.

Be the being in your dreams that easily lifts off and takes flight, for to act as if you are anything less, is a lie.

Are you on your journey? Have your heard the call?  How have you answered this call?

Please leave your comments below. It’s good to share and teach and learn from one another, for that is how we grow. That, and the God seed within.

I am reminded, this day, to pray, every morning, God, please use me. Use me up. I, of myself, can do nothing. Thy will be done. I am but your vessel.