Gratitude...even with a migraine

This blog comes with a warning – when I have a migraine, the first thing to go is my inner sensor, so who knows what will fly out of these fast typing fingers of mine?!!

First things first, though: have you supported The Gratitude Project? If not, stop right there. No, really, stop.

Click here: The Gratitude Project (And here’s a hint: if you didn’t give enough to have me play a concert at your house AND bake you a cake, you might want to go back and rethink. Say what you will about my music, but my baking skills are not to be taken lightly.)

So I’m just past the halfway mark time wise on this crowd funding adventure, and I’m still alive, which I think constitutes success. I had no idea when I naively embarked on this journey, that victory would be defined by seeing just how much stress one human can handle. Nope. Not a clue. But I’m two weeks older and infinitely savvier now. I’m also completely gray and my face is breaking out, but these things can be masked by a good colorist and some foundation, or simple seclusion, which, frankly, is starting to seem more like the option I want to go with.

When you decide to take a stroll on the high wire toward your dreams, you think it’s the first step out that takes all the courage. And in some ways, it does, and that’s why so few people do it. But here’s the part no one talks about: once you’ve made your choice, boldly taken those precarious steps and made it out to the middle, then what?

Once you realize that you’re too far out to go back, it dawns on you, for a split second, that one tiny misstep and you, along with your big dreams, could go crashing to the ground with a loud, unceremonious thud. Game over. 

Or…you realize the only direction is forward, so you teeter and you totter, lose your balance and regain it, and, without nearly the ease and composure you envisioned yourself possessing at the outset, you manage to make your way across the high wire, triumphantly arriving at a place you had once, not so long ago, only imagined. And why I’m likening my journey to an arena activity that also almost always includes clowns and elephants, I’m not quite sure. But that’s a topic for another day. For now, let’s just stick with the dream stuff.

There is no doubt that you have to be willing to let go of how things look in order to accomplish anything. What is worthwhile seldom comes wrapped in a pretty bow. Sometimes, it’s the unlikeliest of places that provide the most growth. It’s the chance to see what you need to let go of in order to lighten the load. Or what qualities you need to embody in order to not only have what you want, but to be who you want. Sometimes taking the walk affords you the opportunity to see who will walk with you. And it also provides the chance to ask: are you willing to commit to your own heart’s desire if no one walks with you?

These are the questions that arise, and these are some of the things I am learning during this process. And I am grateful for all of it.

We are sometimes compelled to do things for a set of reasons we can name. But it is always the unnamed, the unseen, the unexpected, who we become in the wake of our fortunes and misfortunes, and where we are led because of it all, that reveals the bigger picture.

So here’s to the bigger picture for all of us – the one that comes when we allow for more possibilities and greater good than we can presently imagine.

Thanks for stopping by. Please tell your friends.