12 Minute Mile

This time last year I was ordering my Thanksgiving meal at the restaurant within walking distance from my downtown apartment. But when the tiny sip of gingerale hit my already cranky stomach like a lead brick, I wasn't sure if I should add food to the pain...so I apologized, then quickly walked home. And within the hour I was admitted to the local VA for a week long stay that very nearly ended in surgery.

I've waited a whole year to finally get my Thanksgiving dinner. So, today I went back to the same restaurant, ordered the same drink, the same meal, and this time I got to eat and enjoy it.

It doesn't matter how long it takes to do the things we want...it only matters that we get them done.

Gratitude is a funny thing. It's easy to be grateful for fancy cars, adoring spouses, and lots of money in the bank. But finding gratitude amidst the struggle in life requires a whole different set of gratitude skills.

My cousin's son died quite unexpectedly yesterday. He woke up Monday morning with what he thought was just a bad cold, then three days later he's on life support for a flu virus that took his young twenty-something life.

What am I waiting for?

I have intentionally put my life on-hold since June...to repair an aging vehicle ..to make safety upgrades to car and trailer...to save money for this trip to Nova Scotia. But at this point, what, honestly, am I waiting for?

Aaron's tragic death has lit a fire underneath my ass to wrap up my preparations and just get on the road!

It may have taken a year to finally get my Thanksgiving meal, but I did. So, it doesn't matter how long it takes me to get to Nova Scotia, I will get there one mile at time...

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig...

I remember the morning I left for basic training like it was just today. The recruiter showed up at 3am to pick me up, and off we drove into the cold dark morning. My mom was with me at my aunt's in Napa, and we both cried as if I were never coming home again...because that's how it felt...for both of us.

That's the way life changing events feel...they feel like you are never going to come home again.

I will be leaving Arizona in exactly one month, the start of not just a long over-due trip to Nova Scotia, but the start of a whole new way of creating my life...which is precisely the point of all of the work I've been doing to shed the layers of other people's expectations about who they think I'm supposed to be...a set of out-dated expectations that I have never wanted to live up to, but didn't know how to excuse myself from the clutches of the imposed duty and responsibility.

Living a life I create for myself is going to be no easy thing to do, but I am about to learn how to do it. Everything up to now has been preparation only...soon enough the world is about to get very, very real.

And I am just so aware of how different my life is about to become, and it feels like a part of me is dying...yet this truth doesn't make me sad at all.  And just like that cold dark morning nearly 30 years ago, I have no idea how all of this is going to turn out...but I am absolutely certain and determined that it will be the exact opposite experience of basic training...the exact opposite.

I don't think it matters how long it takes for us to find the truth of who we are from the inside out...it's just important that we do.

And I may never return home again, but I will be at home where ever I may be along this crazy adventure that took a lifetime to find...so, home again, home again, jiggety jig...