Live courageously from your heart!
Just step in to narrative of others and you will quickly discover that people have this sense that life is random! The problem with this perspective it leads many of us to grab what ever we can in life, leaving us empty over time. Ever consider that life is a story? Or how about this..if life is a story then it must have an author.
We see this theme played out in movies. Ever see Inkheart? or Inception?
Wandering through life with a vain pursuit of self, circumstances eventually hunted me down and forced me to look into the mirror of myself. Standing in front of the mirror, with a tear running down my face, it took everything I had to see the stranger looking back at me. I became a person that I knew deep down inside I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the courage to come out of hiding. Numbing myself to the pain in life, I convinced myself that it was easier to exist behind a mask, paralyzed at the thought of being exposed. I exhausted myself trying to outrun my pain. This is not who I wanted to be. I was living life the way I wanted to live it, but once my eyes were opened, I realized that I wasn’t free. Flying solo in life left me tired, beaten down, and empty. I’ve tried so long to make it on my own that my hopes and dreams became scattered fragments of what they could have been.
Through the tears, I found the courage to shout out with a battle cry to the enemy: “I have allowed you to take much from me, but as long as I stand I will defend my children!”
I remember some years back taking the family up to the White Mountains of NH for a ridge hike from Mt Washington to Mt Jefferson. The scene of this day was painted by the Master Artist Himself with multiple colors of sunshine peircing through the puffy white cumulus clouds slowly floating by like someone daydreaming.
I have been hiking for years and we spent the prior year preparing the kids for this hike. Spent the day earlier that week at Eastern Mountain Sports making sure that everyone had the right gear for the adventure that awaited us all. I have to tell you that there was an excitement buzzing the air as the kids knew that they would be walking in the clouds some 6,288 ft (1,917 m) up. Not sure they truly grasped this, but nonetheless they were excited.
I ran upstairs to change out of my business clothes into something more comfortable and came down stairs with the movie in one hand and bottle of wine in the other hand, preparing to pour a victory drink. I asked her if she would like a glass, and she declined, which was not her usual response. So I showed her the movie I had rented and asked her if she wanted to watch it, and she declined that too, saying, “This is not going to be a good night for a movie.” As I stood there puzzled and confused, she continued. “I have something to tell you…” and she handed me a folded letter. With one last glance, she turned and walked into the other room. As I came to the word ‘divorce’ written upon the letter, I fell to my knees, paralyzed as my reality became a silhouette of yesterday arriving at the edge of a broken heart. My happily-ever-after turned to dust.
