Busy doesn’t mean contentment and peace. This is my opinion, of course, but one with hard lessons and humility that has led me to exhalation of sweet surrender.
I was afraid to not be busy. I saw so much stillness, so much immobility around me that I grew a distaste for inactivity. Hence, I felt only alive when actually talking, moving, and even when going to bed, laying there, thinking my way to sleep, waking to thoughts that probably idled as I slept.
I was and have been running from me, I realize. That past me that was trying to be convinced with voices of deception that I could never be that very burst of fire within me. It was as if I was carrying this torchlight, constantly charging through and forward, running from this giant THING always behind me, at any time having enough power to blow out the flame in my possession.
I had been running for so long, I didn’t even know what walking was anymore. And then, it happened. That THING caught up with me. Just like that, the flame I was carrying went out. Little did I know, that THING was relentlessly trying to catch up to help me- to save me.
I wasn’t running from my fears; my fears were right with me. That torchlight I was carrying held together not my tomorrows; they were my yesterdays generationally passed down to me. I was busily moving forward every moment I could, one checked-off task at a time that, in my mind, was taking me ahead. And yet, why was I quietly dissatisfied at each checkpoint? Perhaps a moment of celebration within me that cheered- yet never a feeling of complete, utter satisfaction.
I did not tell my parents about my straight As in 8th grade I so needed to prove myself I could get following a fight in school that led me to move from one school to another, only to have to go back to the former school once again. I did not announce being president to this, honored with that, or appointed to speak there- what for? I had to keep running. The recognitions were just my moment of rest. I had no time to talk or celebrate. Sadly, I sometimes felt ashamed I had not arrived at the next checkpoint, most of the time feeling behind, not ahead. Why did I feel this way? I realize the simple answer was, I was still in the same predicament, going nowhere. No matter what I did, my surroundings didn’t change. I was still to be found in that same inactive place, full of despair and hopelessness.
I needed to keep moving to feel alive. This convincing mindset continued onward inside. Captain, president, speaker, leader, mentor eventually led to wife, mother, writer, author, teacher… and then, that fire of energy that was carrying me through blew out. I was flameless. Just for one quick moment in my life, I felt it. That coldness as the temperature clearly drops below comfort. That darkness in the absence of light, leaving me bewildered for that instant I could not see. And all I could do was exactly what I was overdue to do. I took a breath and exhaled.
Somehow I had found peace in that quick instant of feeling cold in the dark. A whisper in my soul told me to get up and find my way out. And in that moment where I heard a trembling voice ask, “How do I find my way out without the flame?” It was as if I heard a voice answering back to me, seemingly well prepared to respond, “You are the flame.” That torchlight that I so long carried with me that I had been convinced was the fire to light my way? Blown out. Done with. That torchlight of fear, despair, and hopelessness. Gone.
In that moment of bitter cold and darkness I had found rest. I had found peace. I had discovered silence in my thoughts. I was no longer running to get there. I had arrived.
I am my own bright light all along. I am my own victory. I am my own story. I am enough. It is well with my soul.
