Fear

Today is gray, cold, and cloudy. The past week has been gray, cold, and cloudy. My brain keeps moving in the direction of getting through a long, cold winter. I know the things I need to do to make winter not only bearable, but enjoyable. These two thoughts are fighting and creating unrest and discontent within me. I don't want the darkness to win. What keeps me tied to this spot of uncomfortableness? I wonder if some part of me gets some perverse pleasure with reviewing the what-ifs about winter and about life, some deep secret place where I want or need to feel grumpy and miserable. Why do I have to work so hard at feeling joy, contentment, peace? How come it doesn't just come unbidden? Dreading the winter doldrums is a cover for the real restlessness within.

I have recently had a wonderful vacation and visit with Sister Two. The past three days were filled with music, laughter, fun, love, and gratitude, with other special women in my life. I had some very precious hours today with an old friend, laughing and doing something we both love to do. It fills me with a wonderment knowing my life is full. It fills me with wonderment knowing I'm alive. But yet....  My house is empty and quiet. Chores loom in front of me. The work week is only a few hours away. What is holding me in this spot of gloom when my life is so close to everything I've ever wanted it to be?

My annual struggle with surviving winter has begun early this year. Thanks for that, Mother Nature. My struggle with time rages daily. I know that underneath all this gloom and doom talk I have work to do, a decision to make. There is one piece of my life that needs resolution. I know what is holding me here. Fear.

Three things about fear:

- Fear can be crippling. It stops us dead and overtakes common sense.

- We need fear. Fear protects us.

- Fear pushes us to where we need to go and who we need to become.

This push is where I need to get to, to take that next leap into who I am becoming. I am getting closer. Perhaps this teeter-totter of feeling safe and protected on one side and the crippling and stopping on the other side is a natural stage. There is a longing within me, a desire and wanting so powerful that I am confident that my fear will not win. I will not use the prospect of winter or the over-used excuse of "not-enough-time" to stop me. I will conquer the fear and this piece of my life will become resolved. I have the faith, in myself and in the force that lives within me that directs my soul, to KNOW it's coming.

Fear be damned.