The first step....

They say every journey begins with the first step. So what is the first step? Is it the first intentional step I take as I begin a new phase in my life, or is the first step that first contraction that began to push me from the womb? Or is it both? And which one is the most important? Does it matter?

I'm taking a step now. A step out of my comfort zone, because my comfort zone, although it's very familiar, has become uncomfortable. I guess you could say I'm birthing myself anew....and the loneliness, the fear, the uncertainty, the anxiousness of these last weeks has been the labor that has pushed me into this new place of being. I'm not really there yet, but I'm making progress. I've at least stopped resisting.  I've decided to move forward and I've even taken a few baby steps. Ok, maybe not such baby steps, but the first steps that will take me to wherever else it is that I'm meant to go at this point in my journey.

Why do we resist?  Why would we rather stay in the discomfort of our familiar zone rather than take a risk and venture out , at least attempting to get out from under that which no longer feels good, that which no longer fits?  Why do we try to convince ourselves that it isn't the zone that doesn't work anymore, it's just something wrong with us? Something that if we could just find the key to what it is, we could fix it and then we would still fit in our comfort zone.

I've been trying. Trying to make it fit again. I've worked so hard to get where I am, and now where I am doesn't fit any more.  Not because it isn't good, not because it isn't serving, but because I've outgrown the need to be where I am, and I have a need to be elsewhere. My soul has a need, a yearning to be more, to do more, to get on about the business that it came here to do. And me, this human being that I am, I'm holding my soul back from flying. I'm holding back because I'm scared; because I can't see where I'll land, because I'm not sure what's waiting for me. And so I resist.

I've resisted so well for so long that the muscles in my legs have become so tense and so tight that just the lightest touch causes me almost unbearable pain. The muscles are pulling so tight that they are pulling my feet inward, so my toes don't even point straight ahead anymore. How can you walk a path when your feet can't even point to it? I'm really scared.  Or I was......

Now I'm done resisting. Somehow, somehow, I've turned the corner on resisting. It happened just yesterday morning, when I finally decided that I had to start doing what I'm doing differently, and took action to make it so.  And when I thought about what I had done, I reached down and ran my hand up and down my calf and the pain was so far diminished from what it had been that I wondered if perhaps I had imagined how bad it had been. But I knew that I hadn't.  I had just had my feet so firmly planted on Terra Firma that the energy it took to hold me in place had caused my muscles to alter their positions in the effort to keep me there.

Now I don't mean this literally of course. I've been walking around just like normal , just like always. No one looking at me would know that I was stuck. But energetically, spiritually, I was as tied to Mother Earth as a gigantic redwood whose roots are sunk deep, deep , deep into the earth and spread far and wide beneath the earth's surface. I was that rooted in my comfort zone.  I was determined that I wasn't going anywhere.

After all, I turned sixty on my last birthday.  I'm a bit overweight, I don't exercise, I've been using food as the drug to  numb myself from knowing that it's time to move on. I've had my hip and knee replaced. My back isn't all that it should be. I should be thinking about my retirement, not thinking of packing up shop, or at the very least, changing the look of the shop, and starting something new, something bigger, something that I can't even imagine what it will look like.

I feel like I'm being called to do  more, and yet I wonder how I can possibly do more than I'm already doing, when what I'm already doing has gotten me so exhausted that I can't hardly get out of bed in the morning. When what I'm doing is taking up so much of my time and energy that there's just nothing left. And I'm being called to do more? Really? That's just crazy.

No, it's not crazy.  Well, ok, it seems crazy because I'm looking at it from a rational, logical point of veiw, and there is nothing rational or logical about following a spiritual path. Following a spiritual path is mystical and magical and doesn't have anything to do with how things should logically work out.  Because really, if it was all about logic and reason I shouldn't be where I am today. I shouldn't have a successful business doing something as illogical as talking to dead people and speaking in tongues and beating on drums and shaking rattles in people's faces.  But I do! Yes, I do.

And now that I've finally said 'yes', now that I'm finally taking steps to move forward, I feel lighter than I have in weeks and weeks. I'm making jokes again and laughing. I'm standing taller and walking straighter; my stride is longer and my arms are swinging more loosely at my sides. And I know I'm doing the right thing.  And I  know, somehow, don't ask me how, but I know somehow that it will all be ok. Even if I don't know where I'm going or how I'm going to get there. I'm just going to keep taking one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other, hoping that the loosened muscles in my calves will let my toes point straight ahead so I can stay on the path, and I will just keep walking until I get there. Wherever there is.