Tag Archives: courage

Come Out! Come Out Wherever You Are!

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Hide and SeekI loved playing outside as a kid.  We often made up our own games but we also played many of the “traditional” games like Red Rover Red Rover, Mother May I, Tag or Hide and Seek (Wow! I am really starting to date myself here!)  It’s so sad to see our kids today planted behind video games or television and missing out on some of the great fun that can be had goofing off during these games… but I digress.  Playing hide and seek as a kid, there would come a point where someone had been caught and was now “it.”  The call would then go out, “Come out! Come out wherever you are!”  It was a signal to everyone else that the risk was gone and they were free to come out of hiding because it was safe.  I can’t say we always came out of hiding with total confidence because, in our circle of friends, you sometimes weren’t sure if it was really ok to come out or if someone was trying to trick you into coming out so they could pounce on you.  It made me think of how we grow up doing the same things with our lives that we did in hide and seek as a child.

Hiding can sometimes be a useful tool.  It allows us to self-protect when we are enduring difficult circumstances.  We are able to retreat and take time to settle our fears and regain some of our strength but when we begin to hide out of habit, it creates difficulties we cannot even imagine.  I have always appeared to be an open book but those few people who have caught glimpses into the hidden pages of my world understand just how different it can be at times.  Past hurts sometimes cause us to react without thinking.  We learn to engage others in ways that minimize their ability to hurt us, or so we think.  For some of us, we learn it is easier to take care of others than to let ourselves need something and then be disappointed.  Over time, we establish patterns of one-sided intimacy with the people in our lives.  We provide support for others, care for them, and even love them deeply, without ever realizing our own need to be cared for in the same way.  It is good to give.  It is good to love but when we find ourselves relying on that love to allow us to hide the truth of who we are we have reached a point where our eyes must be opened.  This new sense of vision can be painful. Love maskThere was a time in my life when I realized that I had sometimes loved others in order to hide myself.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I truly loved these people.  My love for them goes deeper than I have words to express, and yet at the same time I used that love to help hide the depth of my own emotion and need.  I began to believe, through countless wounds, that the world around me was capable of being truly loved but not capable of truly loving me.  That fact never stopped me from loving.  It was impossible to stop me from loving but it was also impossible for me to clearly see just how much it hurt me at times to close my eyes to the truth beneath the surface. I have never used love as a weapon but I realize I have used it as a mask.  I have never loved expecting something in return but I have been guilty of believing I would never receive anything in return.  I have loved for love’s sake alone and yet realize there were times it became convenient to hide behind it.

It is painful to realize we must adjust our sights and begin to understand things we tried so hard to avoid in the past.  Mirrors are wonderful when we look our best but they can destroy our self-esteem for a while when we gaze into them unexpectedly and see areas we are lacking, areas that need attention.  It is easier to not look or easier to only look when we know we have made ourselves “presentable.”  We can then look piously into the glass of self-acceptance that will last only as long as our masks remain intact.  True self-acceptance will only come when we learn to trust what we see when our reflection presents itself unexpectedly and then resolve within ourselves to understand and change it at its most primitive level.

woman on cliffSo just as the words rang out when we were children, I call to you now: “Come out!  Come out wherever you are!”  You don’t have to spend your life in hiding, waiting for someone to find you.  You can proudly step out into the sun and be exactly who you are.  When you do, you will find you are the only one who has the power to truly set yourself free.

Blessings!

What If…?

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Road TripI’ve never been a great “traveler.” Even as a child, when I would get out of my comfort zone, it was so stressful that I would become physically ill any time we went on vacation. Our family would be going on a trip to someplace wonderful and the morning of our departure, I would lock myself in the bathroom and ask to please be allowed to stay home. No matter how much I wanted to be where we were going or how excited I was, it was almost not worth it to endure the stress of getting where we were going. Over the years it never really subsided and it eventually became something that held me back and became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was so worried and stressed about becoming sick on a trip that the mere thought of a trip made me feel miserable physically. No doubt I missed out on a lot of wonderful experiences as a result of my worry and fear.

Our fears can be so very powerful that we not only miss out on great things, but we actually create situations where we feel much worse than necessary. Fears feed on themselves. We all know it but we often feel powerless to change it. For me, there were very valid physical reasons why I got sick as a child but eventually the risk of not feeling well when I traveled became the reason I felt sick. The risk of doing something out my comfort zone (in many ways beyond traveling) became paralyzing at times. All I could think was “what if.” What if something happened? What if I got sick? What if I needed help and was surrounded by strangers? The “what ifs” were so great that it clouded the positive benefits of the experience.

What IfWhen we fear something, all we see is the risk involved. Any potential benefits are far outweighed by what we worry might happen. When we focus on all that can go wrong, we miss out on the thrill of what it feels like when everything goes right. We then find ourselves living in a place where we trade the spectacular for the secure or the miraculous for the mundane. Days turn into years and we wake up one day and realize all the things we have missed because we have been too busy worrying what might happen.

I recently watched a documentary about an aircraft carrier and its crew. At one point, they were relating how difficult and terrifying it is to land an aircraft on a carrier at night. Visibility drops to almost zero and they have to rely totally on their instruments to guide them. Even the most experienced pilots said it didn’t matter how many times they had done it, every time still took their breath away. One officer said that if the pilots thought about the risks of what they are doing, they’d never do it because there are so many things that could go wrong. He mentioned how intense and important the training is and how sometimes things DO go wrong. He said, “When we can’t see and things fall apart, we wrap ourselves in a cocoon of procedures and checklists. If you think about the risk of what you’re doing, you’d never do it. Nobody in his right mind would do it.” We tend to look at these incredibly brave pilots as though they possess something inherently special that we don’t. Actually the difference is when they get scared or things fall apart, they rely on what they have been trained to do.

Aircraft CarrierAs I consider what this officer said about night landings, I could not help but think about how true it is for our lives, especially spiritually. We look around and see people doing great things or exhibiting great faith and tend to think God gave them some special trait or gift of courage that we have not received. The truth is these people have simply learned to wrap themselves in a cocoon of “procedures and checklists” when things go wrong that allow them to stand strong in spite of their fears. They rely on the truths they have been taught or the promises of God’s word. It is not an emotional reliance, but a literal and logical one. Facing our fears and moving forward is not about summoning grand amounts of courage, but it is relying on the things we know to be true. God has made his children some amazing promises, including that He will take care of us no matter the circumstances. We know this (and we believe it) but when things start falling apart, we panic instead of turning our focus to the “checklist” of truths we have been given. Training is not an easy process; ask any soldier. It is exhausting when we are pushed beyond our limits physically, mentally and emotionally but it is precisely what prepares us to be able to handle the most risky circumstances even though are knees are shaking! Learning the truths of life or of God’s word takes effort but it is the only way to create a priceless “cocoon of procedures and checklists” that allows us to land safely in the sweet spot of life we so greatly desire.

Making The Leap!

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Hello and welcome to my leap of faith!  I am truly honored and blessed that you are here.  Leap of FaithWhen I began to consider doing a blog, I thought, “I don’t have time for that!”  Then I thought, “No one will want to visit a page I put together.”  Then I figured, “It’s too much trouble.”  I had spent a couple of years paying for a domain for which I never built the website.  I had intended to create a place where I could share with people openly about life and perspective.  I intended to create a place where I could share my creative outlets with others.  I had great intentions but, as with most things in life, our intentions don’t always turn into actions.  Maybe its laziness, maybe its fear or maybe it was a little bit of both that kept me from making the leap into the virtual world, a leap I just wasn’t willing to make until now.

This past summer I finally cancelled my domain and gave up on doing anything at all.  Then I got hit with an unexpected surgery which took me off work for eight weeks and provided some much needed time to rest and reflect on the many aspects of my life and my journey.  It seems to be that we don’t take time to be still and reflect until we are forced to do so.  These places often present themselves as times of difficulty and more often than not we spend all our energy trying to find ways out of these times instead of taking a breath, sitting back and listening to that still small voice within.  As a result, we lose great opportunities to gain clarity on our life’s journey and the reason we are here.  We lose the chance to gain a better vision of our passions or to recognize the signs pointing us down the path we are meant to walk.

There have been things in the course of my life I have felt compelled to do.  They haven’t been grand acts or gestures but I have usually respected the conviction and acted on it, no matter how small.  It might be encouraging someone.  It might be expressing to the people in my life just how much they mean to me and how much they are loved.  It might be helping the homeless man on the corner.  It might be writing a song that no one hears for years or writing something no one will ever read.  But when I look back over my life, all the things I’ve been compelled to do have generated from what I feel “called” to do.

Knowing your purpose in life is easier than knowing HOW to live out that purpose.  The vision is easy; the execution can be challenging and utterly confusing!  I believe God has a purpose for each and every one of us and He wants it to be clear to us even more than we want it for ourselves.  The problem usually lies in the gap between our vision and His. We want meaning and passion in our lives but only if it doesn’t cost us anything.  I don’t mean a financial cost (though that might happen at times) but a cost in time, energy or even relationships.  Following where we are led is not always a popular path.  Sometimes the risks in doing so seem far too great.  The fear of losing something, or even simply disrupting the status quo in our lives, is so powerful that we succumb to it and settle for so much less than what we are intended to be instead of leaping into the unknown and becoming who we really are!

So today, I am throwing off the chains of fear and apprehension and making a leap of faith into the unknown.  God has not brought me this far to let me down!

Blessings!