Life’s Storms
Revised 5/13/2019
I wrote this poem on a Sunday (see it at the bottom). It had been banging around in my head for a while wanting to be released. So, I took some quiet time while everyone was asleep and let it out. The entire poem is printed at the end of the post.
There is no growth without change. You’ve got to let go of some old stuff. And that can hurt. Often when I’m in the most pain, I realize it’s coming from my trying to control everything. Or resisting the changes that come with the progress. But you see that light . . ., that beautiful next level . . ., and that’s what you have to focus on – Ali Brown
I found the quote by Ali after I wrote the poem and was struck by how much of what I am trying to express in the poem is in her quote.
You have to release what no longer serves you. That could be the story that you have been telling yourself that holds you in chains of fear about success and failure. It could be the story that you tell yourself that you are not capable of being more. The stories you could be telling yourself go on and on. They are varied and unending, depending on what your life has been about so far.
This control is when you stand up on the ship of your own destiny and release the anchor holding you to your stories. You drop the weight that holds you in place. You open to the winds of change. You drop all of the baggage of blaming the world for where you are at this moment in time. You decide to take your control back – control of how you think, how you react.
You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass – Thimber Hawkeye
It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the storm of fears and doubts. To realize that as you set sail on your ship, that there will be those who you leave behind, because they are still chained to their own stories.
When I thought deeply about this I thought of Pompeii. The volcano was going to erupt. It had been giving signs of the coming destruction for months. The people who were awake and listening, left the island behind. But so many of the people didn’t believe what they were seeing on a day-to-day basis. And they left fleeing to safety too late.
I am sure that they fully believed the lies they were telling themselves, the false stories about how safety lay in staying – not in fleeing with nothing to their names, to untold dangers. No, for them staying was the only smart thing to do.
You, however, face your fears of not knowing how you will steer the ship, or even where the next safe harbor will be. You have the courage to face the fears of the unknown, to face the lies that you told yourself and make the right decision – to face and live through the changes that are coming.
There comes a time when you just have to listen to the music of your soul and set sail to the unknown. And so the journey begins.
Life’s Storms
Storms without a name whip the seas into a fury, winds screaming through torrents of rain.
Waves crashing against the shore, bring in lost and forgotten debris.
Stand tall on the deck of your ship, as the birds scatter beneath the howling winds,
Let it blow away what no longer serves you.
You feel the backlash of empty words with no truth, the shadows are winning.
No sunlight, every battle lost, and shadow is winning. No rescue.
The lack of love, the hunger for life is insatiable, an open mouth that wails to be fed.
You can’t undo what has been done, it doesn’t serve you.
Thunder rolls and lightning flashes exposing what still needs to be released.
Let it go out the door, don’t run after it as if falls off the deck and into the sea.
Feel the weight of the past, as the sounds of the anchor being lifted vibrate through your body,
The anchor being lifted from the bottom of the sea, the sound of your journey echoing onward.
Change, the anchor of our soul, it both drops into the sea, and is pulled back up into the ship,
Change moves us ever forward on the journey, unearthing the destination clue by clue, star by star.
Change reveals the next adventure, the next treasure that we are seeking,
Change reveals the next harbor in which to rest our soul
Bright morning stars, as day breaks open the dawn releasing the light, as it climbs the clear sky,
Light breezes blow as it fills the sails, with the dust blown clear, we see what has been done.
Every color sparkles as it plays upon the sea, as we awaken, transformed once more,
We hear the music of our soul, whispering as the journey begins again, echoing ever onward.
Ocean
When you look across the ocean with the sunrise or the sunset, you see the colors mirrored on the surface. This is like our appearance, beautiful when calm and serene. But if you dive down deep, into the depths, that is where the true beauty of a person lies, in their soul. This is the beauty that we miss, when we make surface judgments about someone.
Rumi says, “Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.” Self knowledge is the place to start. We need to dig down deep within us, and question all of the stories we have told ourselves about our life. What do we know to be 100% totally true?
If we seriously ask and listen to the answer to this question, most of us would have to acknowledge that most of our stories about life are made up. We make them up to make sense of the things we have seen, done, and experienced. John Lennon said, “The more I see, the less I know for sure.” This is because the more that we learn about life, the more we see that most of our knowledge is surface knowledge. The deeper we dive, the more we see how much more complicated and interconnected our understanding of life is.
“Knowledge is knowing the depths of the ocean. Wisdom is knowing where to swim” Saleem Sharma. Sometimes life can be hard to navigate. When the storms come in, the waves churn up from the bottom of the sea bed. Things come to the surface that have been long buried. We are like this when the storms of life blow in. All those things that we stuff down inside of us, because we either can’t, or don’t know how to deal with them, come churning up to the surface.
Instead of being afraid of what we have buried, we need to rise up and calm the waters. Be still. Breathe. Be at peace. Realize that God never brings anything into our lives that we can’t handle. Wake up to your dreams. Live them out in your reality.
Lean on the divine, and on those who love us. Change what can be changed, release the rest. See the hope of a new day, the beauty that lies within each of us, and the love that never dies. Remember that you can do anything you “think” you can do, and impossible really means “I m possible”.
Warrior
This is the year, that I become the warrior woman that I didn’t think I could be.
This is the year, that every morning begins with a cup of the grandest vision I can imagine.
This is the year that I find the gold inside of me, and don’t try to dilute it.
This is the year that instead of allowing that critical voice inside my head to stop me, I will dust off the kick ass heals and ignore it.
This is the year, that I let the wild and crazy girl go free.
This is the year that no one (not even me), can put out the burning desire that rages deep inside of me.
This is the year that “I am already everything I need”, becomes more than just a saying.
This is the year, that my “will” is stronger than my resistance.
This is the year that I will forgive myself freely, and love myself relentlessly.
This is the year that my life is a living, breathing, screaming, invitation to believe in better things, not only for myself, but for the whole world.
Key to Life
There is a saying that we have two ears and one mouth, because we are supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. I think that this ability to listen also applies to listening to our inner voice. I know that this is something that I constantly practice.
Do you ever have that nagging feeling as you are walking out the door to go to work or run errands? That feeling that you are forgetting something, but can’t think of what it might be? Do you run down your mental checklist and don’t see anything that you have forgotten? Then later, something happens and you realize what it was you forgot? Happens to me all the time. That is the inner voice talking, but not being listened to.
It is the same voice that tells you stay away from that person – you know the one that makes your skin crawl? It is like a radar warning you away from danger or from a bad relationship. Have you ever pushed that voice down saying, “there is nothing wrong with this person” to yourself, only to regret later not listening to it?
This inner voice is the key to having a life of transformation that doesn’t throw us into “dark night of the soul” transformations. When we listen to this voice, reflect on what it is trying to tell us we can save ourselves a lot of trouble.
I am sure that most of us have heard of the saying, take 10 deep breaths, then talk. It is critical that we pause before reacting.
When I was growing up, there was a lot of yelling and fighting between my parents. It was one of the things that I used to say, “I won’t be this kind of parent when I grow up.” When my kids would do something that made me mad, the house rule was they had to go to their room. When I was done being mad, and able to have a conscious conversation about their behavior then I would go to their room and we would have a talk about what had happened.
I think that the hardest part of this quote is the knowing oneself part of it. It is also the most critical part. I don’t know about you, but if you are like me at all, it is hard to acknowledge the parts of me that I don’t want others to know about. Like if I hide it from myself, no one else can see it either – reminds me of the fairy tale of “The Emperor;’s New Clothes”. LOL
This is a critical piece of transformation, really getting to know oneself. Want to take this deeper? Check out our upcoming workshop “Transformation – The Pathway to the Souls Voice”.
Find out more here – http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event…
Desire
Can you imagine the conversation that might take place between a butterfly and a caterpillar that is about to build their chrysalis? It might sound like that. How would you explain this overwhelming need to your non-caterpillar friends that you have to get so totally wrapped up in your need to change and transform?
The birds are not going to understand. The bees are not going to get it. None of the other kinds of insects and animals go through this type of change. But you know that you just have to do it. There really is no other way to answer your soul’s calling. You have to completely transform.
You have to let go of what is no longer serving you. You are not a climber of leaves and branches any longer. You have this overwhelming desire to fly. To soar. You can’t put a name to this yet, because you haven’t experienced it. But you can feel this constant calling to shift and change. You don’t understand it, yet at a deeper level you know that this is why you were born and you have to go for it.
Arthur Burt says, “Nothing happens until the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of change.” I believe that the change doesn’t have to feel painful. I think that the emotion that we feel is fear. But if you really analyze this feeling that we get, isn’t it an awful lot like when you are riding in a roller coaster? You are nearing the top of the climb and about to go speeding down the other side, isn’t it that feeling? What if this feeling, this fear, is really anticipation?
I know that I love this feeling of riding a roller coaster. The screaming, laughter, and excitement. Not everyone does. But a lot of us do. What if this is the feeling of fear of change, and we change our definition from fear to anticipation? If we can change the meaning of this kind of feeling then, when we enter the chrysalis, we are anticipating the feeling of spreading our wings. We are anticipating the feeling of the wind beneath our wings.
If we are anticipating these feelings, then transformation is exciting. It is something to be desired. We enter into a wonderful relationship with it. Sound interesting? Want to explore this together in greater detail?
Continue your journey to transformation with us. Please see Lemonademakers.org for upcoming events.
Don’t You Know I Was Born To Fly?
As a little girl I learned that other people didn’t like you if you were too smart, and knew all of the answers. I learned that if the teacher was wrong, that you couldn’t correct them, even though they were teaching something that wasn’t true. As a little girl I learned that it was safer to be invisible. I learned to settle for what I got and not to ask for something better. It wasn’t that they might say no, it was that they might take back the little I had just got. Even so, deep down inside I knew that I was worth more than I was receiving.
I also learned that those who were supposed to love you, would let you down. I learned that I couldn’t trust them to do what they promised. I learned that even though they said they loved me, I couldn’t trust them. I understood that even though I might know someone my whole life, I didn’t really know them al all. I learned that people that I thought would never hurt me, could and would crush my soul. I learned that even with the best intentions in the world, the people you care about will fall short. And I learned that this had to be ok. I learned to love them for who they were, and not what my expectations of them wanted them to be.
“Some people are settling down, some people are settling, and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies” – Sarah Jessica Parker
It took me years to undo the programming of being less, and settling for less than who I am. I decided one day that I wanted to feel alive every waking moment, no longer hiding in the shadows afraid to be noticed. That I wanted to have a passionate life, full of experiences. That I wanted to shape what was left of my life into wonderful memories. That I wanted to be a part of making my own world a better place. No more just existing, but rather celebrating my life by constantly being “all in”. I wanted friends that laughed with me, not at me. I wanted good deep conversations about things that mattered. I wanted to be able to share my dreams and have them ask, “how can I help you?”
“Don’t downgrade you dream just to fit your reality. Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny” – Unknown
You are more than enough to go all out, and pursue every dream that you have. Your abilities are not something that you have to hide from, that you have to be scared of. No one should be afraid to be the magnificent person that God made them to be. As Franki said, the hearts desires are there for a reason. It is your very reason for being.
“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary” – Jim Rohn
No one should settle for the ordinary, hum drum existence. The habit of working all day to make an employer rich. The habit of crashing on the couch and watching TV until you go to bed – only to repeat it day after day.
“You can’t run away from who you are. But what you can do is run toward who you want to be” – From Ghost, Jason Reynolds
What you will discover in life is that just being smart, attractive, or physically strong is not enough. That being talented and gifted isn’t enough. That degrees in your chosen education are not enough. They will all get you so far and no further. There must also be a spiritual strength to hold you when everything else fails. When life strips away all of your identities you need spiritual strength to survive. You need spiritual strength to develop the capacity to examine the real you that was left lying face down in the mud.
“If you do not work passionately (even furiously) at being the best in the world at what you do, you fail your talent, your destiny, and your God” – George Lois
This is when the new door opens to you. It is not just that something new is entering your life. It is that your life is becoming something new. Then it is important to remember a vital life truth – the way you meet an ending impacts your new beginnings. Release the need for life to be perfect. Demanding perfection makes these life changes irritating, like a scratchy wool sweater it just makes you uncomfortable and frustrated.
Risk the unusual and pursue a dream. Go for more. This “settling” is not what God put you on this earth for. You are not the kind of person who settles. Listen for what is calling your soul. Create intentions that connect you to that calling. Use emotional language in creating your intentions that connect your thoughts, feelings and desires to the souls calling. Create the possibility of focused change and transformation. Honor who you are by saying yes to everything that forms that connection and saying no to anything that distracts from it.
“Words reveal your beliefs and intentions. Actions reveal your character. When they are in alignment, they reveal your greatest life” – Dr. Steve Maraboli
Look at your life in this present moment – What is it that thrills you? If you can’t answer that question in one second it is time to take a deeper dive into how you are currently writing your life story. It is time to reconnect to your heart and soul. It is time to ask the deeper questions. Dig up your old dreams. Why did you abandon them? Do they still stir your imagination?
Trust the timing of what shows up in your life. There always comes a time, when you realize that you have been sleeping through your life. You discover that you have been drifting with wherever the current takes you. It’s time to take the wheel back, and get back on purpose. You have just been given a wake up call. Trust that it is happening for a reason. Don’t push the snooze button and miss the call because you overslept.
“There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less” – Kurt Hahn
No more settling. Pursue a passionate life. That is our true destiny. It’s not easy, but it is worth it.
GAPs
It is up to us to be a prisoner of our past, by remaining in it; or to be a champion of our future by building it. If your life path was to travel from one of these formations to the next one and so on to the end, how would you do it? You could climb down and walk to the next peak and scale up and repeat over and over again. Or, you could become a bridge builder. Neither way is wrong or right. Just different choices.
We could for sake of argument take opposing viewpoints on the better, faster way to walk this path. We could discuss how those that follow us would make better speed with the bridge. Or how scaling up each peak would define us, and make us stronger. But at the end of the day, the analogy is that each of us has our own path of divine destiny to walk.
Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” I love this. This is the synopsis my most recent experience of the past year. For many years I knew that in my journey in life, I was having one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake in accomplishing my goals. The pattern began when I was four years old and I walked in on my mom having sex with a man that was not my father.
What I took from this experience is that it wasn’t safe to be seen. So I spent years of my life trying to be invisible, and it worked. Thus one foot on the brake, and one foot on the gas. Every time my foot on the gas caused me to be close to my goals, I slammed on the brakes and hid. I worked on this and in the past few years thought that I was no longer being invisible.
I had widened my circle of comfort and felt that I had my foot off the brakes. Instead of hiding in crowds I am very social. I speak on stages to hundreds without fear. But the chameleon quality of this life pattern came to my attention this past week. I had been trying very hard to get my website completed, and I realized that I was again driving with one foot on the brake. In the past 6 months I have been the hold up.
I am expanding my comfort zone and that invisible foot was being slammed on the brakes. I was being defeated by a “greater” thing. Many teach that we came into this life to have a certain experience.
Mine seems to be dealing with this pattern of foot on the brakes, when I am pushing hard on the gas to accomplish a goal. Now I recognize it has chameleon like qualities. I know that when I feel like I am not progressing towards my goals, I have to go looking for that sneaky lizard. This life pattern is my GAP – Gods Area of Preparation. This is where I learn about new ways that my life pattern has shifted, and I learn new ways to build bridges to close that gap. Can you see GAPs in your life pattern? Do you see where you need to learn to build bridges to close off the gap to get to your destination?
Every Leap of Faith is an Adventure
Adventures are how we grow and realize the hidden strengths that are inside each of us. Today I am started a new adventure with two great friends. For all three of us, it is a leap of faith headlong into a new adventure.
Martha Beck in her book, “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” speaks about taking a leap of faith. She says that the term for a collective (like herd of cows) for leopards is a “leap”. A leopard will jump up into the branches of a tree with an antelope carcass in its mouth that outweighs it. Each time the leopard leaps, it is an act of faith that it will make it up onto a branch 10 feet above it. If the leopard doesn’t make it, it could mean it’s death, as it would most likely land on its back with the weight of the antelope on top of it.
She goes on to say that each time we face an unknown, with creativity instead of grasping at known quantities, we leap. Each time we dare to think that our art ( insert here whatever your personal genius is) can sustain us financially we leap. She reflects that each time we surrender to the way things want to happen (not under our control), we leap.
I highly recommend the book – I bookmarked it for you to check out. http://amzn.to/1Xbnz56
A Leap of Faith Helps Us Discover What We Are Really Made Of
What we discover when we leap, is what we are really made of. Do we shrink back at the challenges or opportunities that present themselves to us? Do we pass by the aid of angelic guides, because we think that what we see isn’t the answer we were looking for? That one is too easy, this one is too hard?
Today I took a leap. trusting in the magic of my soul. Today was the day that I took a deep breath, let go of certainty, trusted my heart, and leaped into “seeing what happens next.” D Elton Trueblood said, “faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.” So today we traded in all of our fears for faith and trust without reservation in divine guidance.
I think of Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz. She learned so much about herself with her adventures. She had her companions with her, just as I do today. I don’t know the “how” part of this decision. But I listened to my heart, which said that it is the right decision. Dorothy didn’t know the “how” of getting home, but she listened to Glinda and set out on the journey. Glinda the Good Witch tells her at the end, “you had the power to go home from the very beginning”, so Dorothy of course asks, “why didn’t you tell me?” Because Glinda said, “you would not have believed it. You had to learn it by yourself.”
The same is true for me, and you. Adventures is how we learn what are powers are, and what we are capable of creating together.
Advice for Protecting Your Homes
According to the most recent FBI data from 2010, more than 60 percent of all burglaries involved forcible entries, with over 30 percent considered ‘unlawful,’ meaning they didn’t require force to break in.
I have to say that this is great advice for every exterior door in your home, not just an apartment. I never even considered the difference in the length of screws preventing someone from kicking in the door.
See More: Her Dad Took Out the Door Screws In Her First Apartment and She’s Warning Everyone To Do the Same…
Helping Hand for Cancer Patients
Picture those commercials with the mom sick with a cold, and the husband and kids make her breakfast. Then they pan to the kitchen, which is a disaster. Now think about how hard it would be to do housework when you are recovering from cancer treatments.
Stacey Steele was diagnosed with ovarian cancer nearly two years ago. “I was so weak that showering would literally be my main activity for the day,” Steele told Today. “And when you’re not feeling good, the last thing you want to do is go into a dirty bathroom.”
Steele said Cleaning for a Reason, a nonprofit that provides free housekeeping to women undergoing treatment for cancer, changed her life. Having a clean home freed Steele up to focus on her health and “keeping things routine and normal” for her kids, she told Today.
LemonadeMaker, Debbie Sardone, founder of “Cleaning For A Reason”, first had the idea to offer complimentary housekeeping to cancer patients years ago when she was the owner of a cleaning company. A woman called for an estimate but said she’d have to call back because she couldn’t afford it — radiation and chemotherapy treatment had left her unable to work
This year marks the organization’s 10th anniversary. So far the group has provided $5.5 million worth of cleaning services for more than 19,500 women. They work with partner companies across the country and Canada to fill about 1,400 requests for service each month. While the businesses do not charge cancer patients for services rendered, Today reports, their employees are paid for their work.
See More: This Amazing Nonprofit Cleans Homes for Cancer Patients Who Can’t
The Syrian refugee giving back to Germany
A friend had uploaded a photograph to Facebook of Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin. The caption below read: “Acts of kindness: A Syrian refugee mans a food stand for the homeless, to ‘give something back to the German people’.” The image went viral – it was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and nearly three million times on Imgur. Assali, 38, had become an overnight social media sensation. Over the past 11 years, Assali has had to flee two countries – Syria and Libya -after speaking out against political corruption and human rights abuses. He has built up businesses, been successful and lost it all. He knows what it is like to be homeless and hungry. When in Syria civil war soon broke out and, in 2013, groups affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) entered Zawiya. Everything changed. “When ISIL arrived, people were killed for having an opinion. Every day I saw someone dead on the streets or in the sea,” he says. Assali created a Facebook group to expose ISIL’s crimes. It attracted 25,000 followers. This led to his arrest. Three months later, he was suddenly offered freedom – in return for his house and car. Assali agreed and the man he made the deal with paid for him to reach Sabratha city, where he was to board a boat to Italy. For days, he waited for the boat at a farm alongside hundreds of others. When they eventually boarded, there were 380 other people with him. The boat sank mid-way through the journey. For two hours, he was drifting in the sea, unable to feel his own body. More than 100 people drowned that night, but Assali was eventually rescued by the Italian navy. A few weeks later, he arrived in Germany, where, in June 2015, he was granted asylum. Now he gives back to his temporary country, who has given him a chance to live there for five years, while he hopes he can return to his homeland when it is safe. See More: The Syrian refugee giving back to Germany
Life is short. Do what you love to do.
I found out yesterday that my dentist passed away the day after Christmas. We had become good friends over the years and it really hit me, because I had been in his office just a few days before he passed away. He was just a few years older than me, and we would often talk about all of the things we would do when we retired. Now he will not do any of those things. So here are a few things that I have been thinking about, since hearing this news. Life is short. Do what you love to do. If you don’t like something in your life, then change it. You are the only one who can. If you are looking for your soul mate, then become the person your soul mate is looking for. Open your mind, it is the only way to learn something new. Open your heart and let down the drawbridge that is keeping everyone else out. Open your arms and hug someone like you mean it. Travel some place new every year. Take out that bucket list that you are saving for when you retire. Go out and do those things now. Dance in the rain, splash in the puddles. Release the wild abandon of your inner child. Live your dreams, Create wondrous events in your life. Succumb to the life you really want, but are afraid to have. Eat chocolate. Drink wine. Laugh often. Be proud of the wrinkles on your face, because they show what a wonderful life you are living. Don’t wait until your are old to wear purple, big hats, and foolish grins.