But
those who knew me best in the north also knew that I had a silent laugh. In high school, a friend (Sylvia!) was quick
to pick up on that and she’d mimic me which would make me laugh more, proving her point. Many people
over the years commented on that and I had always wondered how it would feel to
laugh out loud. I had accepted the fact
that neither I nor anyone else would ever hear the sound of my laugh.
I
was probably in the south for about two months when one day something happened
and I burst out laughing, a loud (for me anyway), comfortable, relaxed, hearty
laugh; not the self-conscious, nervous laugh I had stifled in a world that was
foreign to my spirit. Years ago, as an ER Social worker, I had bronchitis and my co-workers, doctors and nurses, deemed it asthma. They had me take a breathing test by blowing into
a tube that leads to a box with a ping pong ball to see
how high you can lift the ball. I blew
as hard as I could and it didn’t move one bit. A nurse thought I was doing it wrong and
demonstrated with what seemed to be an effortless puff and the ball
smashed into the ceiling of the box. I
tried again several times and could not move the ball.
The nurse pointed at me and said, “You need to take breathing lessons!”
It
was 1993 but I didn’t heed her advice until 2006 when I fully admitted to
myself that I was living my life as a square peg trying to fit into a round
hole.
For far too long, I allowed fear,
spiritual manipulation, and my sense of duty to save the world to keep me from
making needed changes. In 2004, the
bottom dropped out of my world. The mask
that hid a faulty spirituality was ripped off - not by choice - and my then
religious beliefs and the people who perpetuated them were exposed for what
they were. It was as though someone had
stripped everyone naked, and the fat, the bones, the cellulite and dimples, and
all the things we spend our lives trying so hard to hide from the world, were in
plain sight spilling into my own spirit and I knew it was the source of my
discomfort, anxiety, and even my silent laughter, yet it took three major
life crisis’ to intersect at the same time for this to be cracked open like a
coconut and expose what my heart had denied for so long; Christianity and God as I had known it had never really existed. It was freeing, yet scary and for the next
couple of years I spent floundering as though I were a hot air balloon with no
particular destination. At times, I saw familiar faces and even reached out
hoping to be rescued from the unknown, yet in an odd sense, I knew that the season
of superficial faith was over. But I
didn’t know where it led; to atheism? I
wasn’t sure. In 2007, I began Yoga and
Meditation.
It was only through Yoga
and Meditation - not prayer which is often self-directed and ego-driven - that I heard the screams of my soul. Sometimes we just need to shut the hell up and close out all the distractions - including phone, TV and internet. For me, it is in silence, deep breathing, being, accepting, letting go, forgiving, moving forward, embracing, and listening, that my spirit is able to soar to a place of peace and joy. It is there,
within myself, that I found that God, and his ‘will’ for us, is not so complicated after all. The reality is, He's already in us and we
have a choice to acknowledge or reject Him. Ironically, those who proclaim to know God the most often spend their whole lives seeking Him like blind sheep - though he is right here - waiting for Him to manifest himself supernaturally
when, in reality, He does it naturally.
Hint:
If you have the gift to be an artist, singer, dancer, carpenter,
speaker, etc., you don’t need God’s
special permission to do it! He’s
already given it to you! And amazingly, the more you use your gifts, the
path in which to use them becomes
clearer.
