Invitations, Part II

Some of y’all have already heard me say that I see signs everywhere. I feel sometimes like I live in a world of divine messages — and indeed I do.

The messages feel strong right now. There’s a heaviness in my universe. It isn’t a particularly sad thing to admit that — it isn’t any more than the realization that, as I said to Hayes last night, the second half involves quite a lot of saying goodbye. Family members who’ve always been there are no longer there, friends you’ve had your whole adult life fade away into other realms. So it’s ultimately only a feeling of gravity, of noticing the actual weight of what is inevitable. An invitation to notice, period, to pay attention. The rubber has hit the road.

First half = hello. Second half = goodbye.

I don’t have to be dualistic and too matter of fact about it, it can be slippery and watery, but still be reality. I hold that in one side of my heart and a plan to prune and plant flowers in the other. Does that make sense?

What gets us through it but joy? Finding joy is the only thing that makes it worth it. And what I know in my bones now is that finding joy is a practice. It used to whisper in my ear and I’d fly away to follow it, but now that I am here, I cultivate it from an grounded place instead of waiting on it to take a shine to me.

If I want to paint, I paint. Even if I suck at it.

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I was doing my soul work this morning and the ACA daily reading centered around spiritual focus. My nuclear family didn’t have a spiritual focus, and the reading made me understand how important it is.

An invitation. A message.

My family’s focus was on my parents’ relationship, my father’s drinking, their mutual addiction to each other, their instability — what was best for the family as a whole was not the focus, even if they sometimes tried to make it so. I wrote a piece about it called “Islands” in Blood. I don’t think I understood it then, but I knew it and was trying to put into words what that lack of a spiritual center had created. Isolation. We were all on our own. My mind then turned to cycles and how I want to break the ones I’ve been so involved in. I don’t want my son to feel like an island. I want him to know that his family, and his Mama specifically, has a spiritual focus, that we can be calm and trust ourselves to be okay, that he won’t feel an instability that prevents his emotional safety, that he knows decisions are being made that include what is best for him.

If he wants to paint, I want him to paint. I will never tell him he sucks at it.

this morning’s playtime

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The Melody Beattie reading this morning included this: There is purpose, meaning, and rhythm to each step — each beat of your life — each step, each feeling, each beat of your life is another mile traveled on your journey, your journey to your heart.

I think I’m starting to understand that. I feel like I understand things better with every passing day. Am I forever going be arriving? Every day feels like — ah, I understand now — but that’s a cycle too.

There is no arriving. There’s only growing. It happens as it should and there is a rhythm to it if we let go and trust, even just a little bit. Ideas, messages, and invitations are always evolving and they do it right on time and right in time, in their time, when we are ready.

If we are lucky.

Keep on keeping on, keep receiving, and paint if you want to paint.

Love,

Allison

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Recommended song for today: Trevor Hall: You Can’t Rush Your Healing