ONE HUNDRED DAYS... Black & White

As I move into the second 100 days of my Journey In Black & White I am reminded of a story I once read.

A powerful, accomplished woman hit a place in her life where everything changed. Her health, her marriage, her job...all were in jeopardy. During this traumatic time she had a dream of a woman building a mountain. The woman was working very hard, laboring alone, laying stone after stone in place...feeling good about her achievements.

 As the dreamer watched she realized that the hard working mountain builder was herself. She felt a sense of pride watching her single mindedly continue, letting no one and nothing stop her. She toiled day and night climbing as she went, until the mountain was perfect. Then she stood solidly on top and smiled. The view was marvelous. She had it all.

The dreamer was feeling pretty good about herself and her alter ego on the mountain top, until she saw a crack opening up at the foot of the mountain. Fear gripped her heart as the ever widening crack make its way up to where the woman stood on the peak unaware of the coming danger.

Suddenly the builder-of-the-mountain realized something was wrong and looked down. Unthinkable terror seized her as the world began to crumble beneath her feet. There was no hope. It was over. All the hard work. All the personal achievement. All the years of sacrifice. All of her social standing. Everything gone.

But just as the earth shifted into nothingness...at the very last minute...she discovered...she could fly.

 

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BLOGS ON THE JOURNEY
Since beginning my Journey in Black & White I have blogged about 'Seeing With New Eyes,' The Road Ahead Lies Within,' and, 'The Question Of Prayer.' 'I Couldn't...But I Did' was a shocker for some of my friends. But during these first 100 days something in me has shifted. I know exactly the day it happen.


The day I posted Footprints...I heard, "This will change everything." In 'Footprints'  I wrote about sharing with my 10 year old grandson the many-many miracles God has performed in our family. Talking about the miracles and hearing my FB friends feedback on their own miracles has lit a fire in me to go deeper into God's Word and really focus on healing and wholeness for others. I want the same miracles I have experienced in myself and in my family to be manifested in millions of lives across the earth. Why not? He is a big God and He loves all of us equally.

FOR YEARS a few of my closest friends have called me Eagle Woman. Sometimes when I hear that I think, "Yeah...perhaps I do fly." Other times I just wished they were right. As long as I can remember I have had a desire to move beyond my (sometimes self-imposed) boundaries into a spiritual dimension closer to God.


With that in mind a lot of my old interest  has shifted...for the next 100 days I will be focusing on miracles. All kinds of miracles. I want to go to God with a pure heart with my friends and family's needs and remind Him that He did 'this' and 'this' and He never changes. He told the Children of Israel to recount His signs and wonders to help build faith. I want more. I want to test the boundaries of a life unfettered with issues and fear. I want to go beyond my own mountains of achievements, count them as nothing and see if God has more for me.I want to soar.

In fact this poem by Myra Dutton says it well...it is my prayer.

LEARNING TO FLY

My soul cried out, plaintive and echoing to an eagle gliding toward the sun.

And in reply, a prevailing wind rose over the towering peak and entered my heart,

leaving me shaken as a downy feather on the breast of creation.

Now all I know is that feathers have grown from my own breast, and vast wings span the horizon.

I am learning to fly on the mountain top where wind  and wisdom are one.

Why the Journey?

I could deny the symptoms no longer and made the appointment. Up until the last few months I had not been sick for ten years or more. But something had happened to compromise my immune system and the consequences were sobering.

I would be 64 soon, my mother had died with breast cancer at my age. In fact all of my immediate family had died near my age or earlier. The possibility of my following suit was a major medical reality.

So I did all the test...scans...x-rays...lab work and thank God all came back negative...in fact I was told because of my lifestyle choices (vegetarian...non smoking...outdoor enthusiast) I have the body of a woman twenty years younger. Really good news except that this twenty-years-younger body was wracked with pain, had re-occurring breathing problems, and was in a state of chronic exhaustion.

My doctor, who happens to be younger than my youngest child, looked at me and said, "Stress."
I could feel my body tensing up in denial. "Stress!! Stress? Who me? Why I wrote a book about Searching for Peace and finding it! Stress? Ridicules! What does 'that child' know?"

After doing some research on stress I was a bit more humble. I discovered that 'that child', with her freshly minted medical degree, was one smart cookie. Every symptom I had could be a textbook study on the repercussions of stress and I came to know if I didn't change something much worse could happen.

Basically I discovered 'stress' is not so much what happens to you it is how you respond to what happens to you. Eventually I was led to write down every potentially stressful thing that had happened to me in the last year. The list was an eye opener...at the end of 2008 on Christmas Day my brother, and only sibling, was found dead. He was 59 years old. New Years Day 2009 I was in Tennessee making arrangements for his memorial service and cremation. In February I was back in TN being made executor of his estate and trying to decide what to do with his property. In all I made eight long distance exhausting trips in 2009. On the home front some of my children had serious marriage problems and one daughter ended up in a homeless shelter overnight with her five kids. The year progressed and the list went on and on and on.

Toward the end of the year I had to put my cat to sleep. That day I hit a wall. I am not an overly emotional person. I can be stoic, calm in crisis, peaceful. I actually have faith and people call me when they are troubled. But when I realized I was going to loose that little stray I had a major melt down in the vets office. My heart broke. I sobbed as if I were dying.

Doubled over in pain I wept for the death of my sweet Mi Amor. He was a scrappy little cat with an attitude but I loved him and he loved me. Tears rained down my face falling on the soft fur of my dying cat. My whole body shook. I seemed to be weeping for every tragedy that has ever taken place across the earth since the beginning of time. I wept for Haiti, hungry children, lonely women, and troubled men. I wept for my mother, my brother, my children, the lost years of my own life when I had tried to please other people and lost myself in the process. I wept for the death of my own soul. Soon after that the physical symptoms began.

The plan for The Journey in Black & White came as sort of a spiritual challenge...perhaps from God, but for sure from myself. If I was going to live and not die something had to change. I would set apart a year between my 64th birthday and my 65th and discover who I really was and what part of how I lived my life was the real me? For as long as I can remember I had been embracing life for others, doing whatever it took to make every bodies everything work...this year is mine.

During this year I want to connect more to the solitude deep in my spirit where God lives. I want to find my lost childhood and see God, and the world, through un-wounded eyes. I want to have fun. Actually I want to find out what fun is! Not just what others think fun is but what is fun to me? I want to be Wanda, who ever she might be. I want to regain my health. I want to take full responsibility for my own happiness. I want to know who made the rules for my life and why do I keep them? I want to be kinder. Love purely. I want to know the black & white truth about myself and why I try to fix things and people. I want to re-examine my life and find a depth, a significance, a beauty that I may not have noticed before. In essence I want to live the next year as if it were my last.

I intend to travel light without a lot of preconceived ideas of how this year will play out. As a writer I did gather some tools of my trade to take on my Journey...five composition books, a thick journal, black inked gel pens, my Bible. Being obsessively into details...they are all black & white. There they are spread out on my table in the picture above. As I fill them I will share their contents here on this blog. April 30th is my birthday and my journey will begin.


I hope you will journey with me...comment and give feedback on each post...share your own journey to your truth.


Peace,
Wanda G