One Step, One Journey

 

 I’ve heard so many talk about path and how they began and where they began and where they are at now and I’ve always said that my own path began about a year ago.  I think that is completely false.  My path began at birth, as did yours if you think about it.  Every part of our life is a journey and even the parts that don’t seem to be spiritual are related...they have to be because we are one person walking one path with many diversions and difficulties and tribulations along the way. 

My early childhood was spent very much in fear of God and in fear of not having religion.  I grew up in a very religious town where if you weren’t like "them" you were going to hell.  Yes, I was told I was going to hell by another child at the age of 8 and many times after that.  Basically, I was a good kid, so this didn’t really make sense to me.  In my later teens, those same kids were so mean to me that I wondered how they expected to go to heaven. 

My path then was not what most would call spiritual, but I found happiness and peace in nature and in music...lol...I would go outside on a cold winter nite...and lie in the snow and sing at the top of my lungs and watch the northern lights dance like magic.  I think on those nites in some way, I knew God....or I would sit in my bedroom. I had a corner bedroom on the 2nd floor of an old farmhouse with 2 huge windows on either side of my bed.  I never felt safer than being in my bedroom during a blizzard or dust storm.  We lived on the open prairie so the storms could be wild at times.  Thru college and work and marriage...I always found some place that helped me to feel peace and safety...usually outside.  Those places were my spiritual places that helped to heal when I needed healing.... a bench, just on the side of the path, to rest.

Then depression set in, for real, diagnosed.  Was this not also part of path?  How low do you need to get to find the light? Some don’t need to sink at all...but I did.  For 3 long years, the longest darkest years until one day...I wanted to see some colour again.  That day I bought a pink t-shirt....lol...sounds funny but that's when I knew I was healing.  I had made it, I survived, I had wanted to die more than once, but I made it.  It was shortly after that day that my life turned around...but it was always part of the path I was meant to walk.

 I live by the ocean now.  I go down there many evenings, before I come online, and just let the powerful sound of the waves wash over me.  Sometimes I cry, sometimes I feel such joy.  I watch the eagles above and seals in the bay and again I find solace in nature as the sun sets. 

The difference now, from those early years is the awareness of path, not the path itself.  I am exactly where I am supposed to be and all those steps I took filled with sadness and pain and hatred and guilt and joy and love, are part of my path.  My very specific, particular path. My own.  How I move forward from today is based on all those tiny steps AND the awareness of Spirit of God who has always been with me...most especially that day, so long ago...when I was told...I was going to hell.

-Laurel (July 8/01)