Saturday, July 3, 2010

How Fear Can Give Us a Spiritual Nudge

There are times when I still feel a faint sharp pain on top of my head. It's in the exact spot where the load bar struck me about seven months ago. I usually feel it when I think about the possibility of not following through with my plans to release the life I know now in order to perhaps gain a buried vision. As if I needed another reminder of one of the more fear inducing moments of my life.

I receive the reminder of that dark winter morning because I do need it. The morning that a part of me knew was going to happen. The part that doesn't know the exact details yet and that the other half so easily wishes to discount. I was pulling into a gas station. A car swerved in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, letting it go past and then proceeded to the gas pump. I felt the blow to my head and thought, "I just got hit, oh well." It wasn't long before I knew that it was going to be a little more than just "oh well." The cool-warm sticky flow couldn't be denied even though I tried to. "Am I bleeding?," I thought as my mind raced. I reached up to my neck, then glanced at my hand and saw in an instant that it was more than what I was prepared to handle. My stubbornness told me that I could actually go on and go about my day as though nothing had happened. All I needed was a little clean-up.

My sense of fear said otherwise. It said "stop." Go get help. Even though you hate doctors, you've got to go. So I went back, got some help and even walked into the Poudre Valley Emergency Room looking like I'd just stepped out of a murder scene from a horror flick. There's a reason I don't watch horror flicks. I tremble at the sight of blood. Just ask all the nurses who always have to ask "are you ok?" when they prick or prod me.

Like all the other times I've been hurt or have had to go to a doctor's office, I was visibly shaking and randomly somewhat incoherent. I was worried that the bleeding wouldn't stop, how I should've probably rechecked my HIV negative status months ago, what the doctors might have to do to me, the questions they might ask, if I was going to have to pay for this, how I looked, what people would think of me, and if they were going to have to shave my head to put in the stitches. A girl with an inner priss doesn't like to have her hair messed with.

Fear can be a good thing at times. It can motivate us to step outside of our comfort zones. It can give us the signal that we're not quite ready because we have more work to do. Fear can warn us that something or someone is not the best choice. At times it can show us that we need to let go in order to realize that vision we have buried.

Fear inducing moments, like that Friday mid-December morning, wake us up. We weren't listening to our inner soul, so the Universe gives us no option but to start. Their reminders seep back in when we begin to stray from what that inner soul really wants. It's a way of saying remember. Stop. Listen. No, you can't go down that path again. You can't continue in that direction because it's not going to fulfill you.

Fear can be a reminder that the new direction you've decided on is going to have to be taken, no matter what. There's no turning back. There's no settling for less. There's no such thing as no more follow-through. Because no matter how many bends you may decide to turn instead, you'll always end up back in the same place-wanting your vision.

Until that vision becomes more than a chalked-out painting that you sometimes jump into, but then find that the rain has washed away into an unrecognizable smudge whenever you stop believing in its possibility.

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