I woke up yesterday morning scared to death of what I had done. I hardly slept the whole night before.
It was so scary to tell you how I really feel, what I’ve really been through. I was afraid you’d think of me as a failure, because at times I haven’t been able to figure out how to pick myself up again. I was afraid you’d think, “What she’s going through doesn’t begin to compare to what I’ve been through.” Or, maybe you’d think I’m just a whiny little self-absorbed brat.
But instead, you called me…brave. Wow.
I cried shirtsleeves of tears over your comments and posts. You being here, you showing up for this…it’s giving purpose to the pain.
So, I am insisting upon myself that I continue to be brave. I didn’t go through all this stuff for nothing. I drew all these experiences to myself to learn something…and then share it.
So, take what you can. I’m just here to try and give to you what it’s taken me 499 losses of every freaking painful sort to figure out.
I have so much more to say…such mind-blowing, life-changing, eye-opening, profound experiences that have brought me to the altar of my soul…and it was there that I found the greatest awakenings in the deepest pain, the purest joy in the deepest cuts of sorrow.
I’m so glad you’re here, and can’t wait to share more.
So now, for chapter three of Grim Reaper Girl.
This is it right here…are you ready?
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EXPECT BLISS
A couple weeks ago, I met a man after service at our local Unity Church on New Year’s Day. The morning had been a powerful “releasing of the old” and “bringing in of the new.” It was on this day that I decided to GIVE UP MY GRIM REAPER GIRL STATUS and start using my voice to echo the strength and beauty I’ve found in my experiences. No longer a victim of life…a creator of it instead.
I remember Michael Mirdad, the speaker, saying, “What’s going to happen now that you’re not hiding behind your pain anymore?” And I thought, “Oh, wow…what IS going to happen?!”
I had shared in the service, a little of my story, so afterwards, this man came up to me and said he, too, had witnessed many deaths in his lifetime, and he understood how hard it was. We talked for awhile and then out of the blue he said something I’ll never forget. He said, “But I just get up every morning and I try really hard to BLISSFUL.”
“Wow, you try really hard to be…BLISSFUL?!” I thought! I get up every morning and think, “How am I going to survive another train wreck?!”
I was so taken back…by his almost “expectation” that life could hand him pure bliss every day.
That was an ah-ha moment for me.
Remember what I said in the first post? That it was at my lowest point that I decided I didn’t want to live a life of loss anymore?
Well, I don’t. I DO NOT LIVE A LIFE OF LOSS ANYMORE.
Bad things still happen. People still die. But I’m not living a life of loss.
I see the joy and beauty around the pain. I’ve learned the path to peace. I’ve learned to accept this moment as it is, and to treasure it.
Borrowed from Oprah
Mark Nepo, author of “The Book of Awakening” (a book Oprah thinks every human being on the planet should own) shared a story on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday that changed me.
He said one morning he stepped outside and was just beholding the beauty of a gorgeous, sunny day, taking in all the opportunity that brand new day held for him, soakin’ it all up when BAM. He stubbed his toe on a rock. So bad he thought he broke it.
The pain overtook him. All he could think about was the toe, the pain.
And then, he had his own ah-ha moment. He looked up, looked around, and remembered the beauty of the day around him.
And he thought, “Is everything the pain in my toe? Or is the pain in my toe, within the miracle of the sun and the day and everything else?”
When I heard this, I decided…I am not my stubbed toes. There is beauty around the pain. I choose to see that.
Neale Donald Walsch put it best in his book, “Communion With God.”
“Your life lived is…a reflection of your deepest understandings.
If your life is an experience of constant joy and total bliss, then you truly have it. This does not mean that your life is without the conditions that can cause pain, suffering, and disappointment. It does mean that you live in joy despite those conditions. Your experience has nothing to do with conditions.
This is unconditional love, of which I have spoken many times…When you have unconditional love of Life, then you love Life just the way it is showing up, right here, right now.”
Yup, that’s me. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I strive for every day! That’s my little saying, “Finding peace in the middle of my own hurricanes!” I am not my stuff. I am not my circumstances. My joy comes from within, from knowing what a beautiful soul I am, what a beautiful life I am given each day.
I have asked myself repeatedly, why did I draw these experiences of so much DEATH into my life? I have known in my heart that it was, in fact, to experience more life. I’ve tried to figure out how to put this into words and here it is, so beautifully…
“…every moment is a dying. Every moment is the end of your life as what you were, and the beginning of your life as what you now choose to become. In each moment you are recreating yourself anew…
The way to produce more life is to experience more death. Don’t let death be a once-in-a-lifetime thing! Experience each moment of your life as a death, for that is, in truth, what it is when you re-define death as simply the end of one experience and the beginning of another.
When you do this, you can have a little funeral each moment for what has just passed, for what just died. And then you can turn around and create the future, realizing that there is a future, that there is more Life.
When you know this, the idea of “not enough” is shattered, and you can begin to use each golden Moment of Now in a new way, with new understanding and deeper appreciation, with larger awareness and greater consciousness.”
Yup, that’s been my gift. I use each Moment of Now in a new way. I have grown that deeper appreciation and awareness, in spades. I know, “This too shall pass.” I know that everything is always changing, that people come and go in my life. So, I try really hard not to suffer through letting people/things/stuff go – instead, to look at the space which is created when they do go – and remember that now, it can be filled with something new.
This means that every day, I look at my children with full awareness that their time may come tomorrow. I’ve watched two small children in my life die unexpectedly, and I lost a baby before my son was born. I know deeply, that every second with my two precious blessings is a gift.
But I don’t use that to live in fear. Instead, I simply try not to waste any of my moments with them. Does that mean I’m Supermom? No, it just means, I soak up every moment, big or small. Tonight we went to Wal-Mart and made a party out of our daughter spending a $15 gift card from Christmas – it’s the simple things, I tell ya, the simple things.
I try not to miss a birthday party or a dinner invitation because ten times now, that birthday party has been the last memory I made with a loved one – the memory I cherish now more then any other. And the one time I didn’t go to a birthday party…was the last time I could’ve held my nephew alive.
I reach out and connect with as many people as I can each day (even though being a hermit would be SO much easier and simpler!) because that’s what life is about! Because when I die, I want a funeral full of people saying I made them feel like they mattered in this world.
I give away as much as I possibly can because I know what it’s like to feel like you have nothing. And because creating a constant flow of energy back and forth, and around, between all of us – that is life! If we stop giving, we stop the flow of life itself!
I’ve found the most incredible faith possible…I mean, it is unbelievable how I trust the Universe to provide for me now because I have been at my breaking point again and again, and every time, found exactly what I needed to get through.
I don't know for sure...but I've always been told these orbs that show up in photos are our angels. I opened this photo to insert it here & suddenly noticed...10 orbs around me. This was taken on my birthday 2 weeks ago.
I wake up every day feeling BLISSFUL, people – heck ya, I said it and I mean it – I can’t believe it’s true but I wake up every day feeling BLISSFUL!!!!! Because I have a new day before me to create anything I want.
I’m not in survival mode anymore. I’m in full-throttle THRIVE mode.
I still struggle, I still need constant daily reminders of all this…but I have that now, with 12 new angels around me – they are my constant reminder.
Yes, death has been my gift…because it has made me more…
ALIVE.
And when I die, you better believe, I’m gonna die…a BLISSFUL woman.
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