Discovering What Is

Artist: Karen Noles

What if we can stop looking for what we cannot find, and discover what is.

Amy Grant, recently shared this in an interview. Bidding farewell to all the previous versions of herself, and saying, “I’m here, but I can’t be her anymore.”

This pops for me. Understanding when this sensation arrives I’m being asked to pause and to pay attention.

Life began to feel a bit complicated. Too many ‘tabs’ open when I only desired a few. Feeling confident that no matter what it has in store I can trust I have everything needed to feel as safe and secure as possible. I understand the immense privilege I have to be able to even utter these words, and how quickly the ground can quake beneath my feet.

How my humanness can defer to another when I sense whatever it may be comes more naturally to them, and they can do it with more ease, better.

I’m deeply aware of this, and turning it slowly around. Asking questions, desiring learning moments, to be aware of those matters I have handed over to another. In hopes of it building needed confidence, and trusting I have what it requires to learn.

This recent move from our Hawaiian island home back to the mainland took everything I have. Requiring what I have been referring to as a Herculean effort for my adventuring partner, Richard, and me. On a daily basis I intentionally asked to not go into overwhelm, and only be given on a need to know basis what was next. Phew, huge exhale.

Not borrowing trouble, as a very dear patient taught me decades ago when I was inquiring about something in her life as I did my chaplain rounds.

Her wisdom has remained with me decades later.

I’m delighting in how my insides are slowly coming down off an adrenal high. Settling slowly into my natural rhythm. I cannot take care of nor live in the ways I previously had. Tabs are being closed one by one.

Simpler, less, smaller, is creating and inviting in expansiveness, freedom, and offering a gift of time to those things that make my heart sing. Writing, reading, nesting, connecting with my peeps, road trips to the coast, adventures, neighboring… Again, gifts I do not take for granted.

Oh, I needed my brain, and am so grateful for it with its abundant capabilities. All the scheduling, sorting through the myriad of choices we were facing in often rapid succession. Yet, as soon as I offered it over, requesting assistance there it was, often in the most unexpected and creative of ways.

Tapping into how we’re uniquely created. Some in need of constant movement, others requiring daily doses of quiet time, and everything in-between.

Our practice becomes an ongoing inner listening. Curiosity about how we perceive ourselves is ever changing. Are we able to cultivate an openness to what is, may be next, and not to what was?

This can create tension to even ponder, yet perhaps those are the aspects of our lives simply asking for our attention.

“My life is not my business. I’m just taking orders.” ~ Bryon Katie

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