On My Knees: A Perspective Shift
Often times it is the lowest points of my life that bring the greatest treasures. When I am brought to my knees by defeat, I assume the perfect position to eventually give thanks and praise to the very conditions that brought me there.
It was deciding to end a 20-year partnership that both turned me upside down and inside out with lessons I could never have predicted. These surprises were the perfect portal to the path of my liberation.
I continue to take great council in Rumi’s wisdom that our wounds provide the cracks that let the light shine through.
I never could have predicted, after seven years of internal deliberation, that it would be the people outside of my marriage to elicit the greatest heartbreak, and the greatest opening, once my truth was spoken.
When my in-laws and a few key friends whom I consider family decided to stop speaking to me after I made the call to leave a marriage which had ended years prior, I was brought to my knees with loss. The classic victim at the time, I felt a supreme injustice had been done. I was not yet able to see the gift in this apparent display of rejection.
photo credit: Expansion by Paige Bradley
My lowest moments seem to elicit a natural surrender to my deepest truths, as I touch the rock-bottom foundation for living. It is there, in my most desperate emotional states, where I must test out my theories which were developed in the higher flying times and phases of my life.
When I am able to dip beneath the surface of my habitual state of being, freedom, and the ability to produce, a new kind of magic is uncovered. The jewels of self-love that can be found there is worth a dip into the depths of despair – at least once in a while.
After leaving my marriage, as hard as it is to admit at times, I absolutely soared with a newfound freedom. About three months into this blissful state, I began to experience one form of personal disaster after another. I felt as if I was being punished for my high-flying feelings when I knew my spouse was in a very different emotional state after we decided to divorce.
In an effort to get out of this rut, I took my daughter on a camping trip. On our last day, she sprained her ankle halfway out into a hike. As I carried her back to base camp on my back, I silently questioned my God Source how it could be possible to hit me with yet another challenge at this time. After safely leaving my daughter at a picnic bench to rest and elevate her ankle, I trudged on to break down our camp alone. By the time I reached our camp, I had worked up enough energy about feeling victimized by this last hit in a month of nothing-possibly-more-could-go-wrong-kind-of-month. Then I did what any emotionally victimized person would do. I got down on my knees, cried out my frustration, pounded the earth beneath me and had a proper tantrum with the trees and my God as my witness.
After a fully exhausting return trip home, I took a bath and prepared for sleep. While I was brushing my teeth, I heard the voice. I have never left you. I have been here the whole time. I know enough to listen when messages come into my awareness that do not feel like my own thoughts. This was one of those times. Yet, with my camping experience fresh in my mind, my own thought was “Yea, great. A huge help you are if you’ve been here the whole time and all this shit still went down.” I was obviously still attached to being the victim and I continued to brush my teeth. Then I heard the gravity of the next message, which brought me to my knees with the truth of it. It was you who left you.
Oh. My. God.
With that divine assist, it all became clear. Suddenly the things that previously held the most weight in my life such as being liked, looking good, doing what is expected of a good woman, wife, mother, coach, daughter, friend, were seen for the illusion that they are. It became crystal clear to me at that point that if I was going to turn this around, I had to stand with me. I had to act on what I knew to be true and the hard fact was these actions might not be accepted by anyone outside of me. In fact, I may be left alone.
But I knew what I had to do. Once I could admit to myself how these family members were a reflection of how I had left myself high and dry without any internal support or validation, I could genuinely feel gratitude for their role in this lesson. When this clicked, things started to turn in my favor. Synchronicities began to occur. It was if I had entered an enhanced flow state, creating magic with every inspired action. In not striving to meet other’s expectations of me and not needing to make anything happen that wasn’t divinely inspired from within, everything was done. In not doing, everything was done better than I could have ever planned!
And the fear of being alone was shown to be another illusion. There was more love and light in my life than ever before. I was living in an exalted state and it has since become more common for me to be in love and ease than to struggle.
I have been brought to my knees and it is here I will consciously return each day to give thanks to the very beings who serve my soul by being in my life – no matter what drama we choose to act out together in our path to wholeness.