I am learning to spend time with my inner self, to meditate and clear my mind of the chaos that is generally happening and learning to connect with my self again. To truly learn about the person I am without the titles or the labels that society wants to put onto everyone. I am no different; it seems if we label everything and everyone we know where we stand, we know what to do, how to react, how to behave… So the last few weeks I have been paying attention to the number of times I label or judge someone or a situation, I have been paying attention to how I react to people internally. What does my heart say, what does my soul say. Learning to stop the inner monologue of labels is a little more challenging than we think.. Some of the things that are said daily can be taken as judging. So today after my beautiful run through Moss-Wright Park, I was able to quietly sit by the creek and listen to the water rush by, feel the breeze surrounding me, and listen to the music of the birds in the air. What came to mind was a very vivid picture of where I started and the person who healed a young girl from the damages of a broken birth mother. I didn’t begin this journey until that home in the holler, with it massive shade tree in the front yard where we played, road bikes, learned to laugh and we just knew we were safe. Those roots were deep and the canopy of the tree was huge. I am like that tree rooted into this soil but growing, shaping and changing. Like the branches of that tree, spreading my arms wide to shade and protect those I love but to also grow and change into who I was always supposed to be.
I vividly remembered the smells in the kitchen as my foster mom was cooking, the sheets hanging on the line to dry, the front porch swing; that we broke a few times because we would swing to high. Every spring/summer there would be new batch of wild kittens born under that porch which we were strictly told not touch. Those kittens were so beautiful. I remember sitting on that porch and harvesting our garden, canning every summer, we played hide and seek, played barbies out there on that porch, we saw deer daily in the pasture all through the view of that tree.
I vividly recalled the love I felt in Sunday School at this small country church in the holler, where the men sat on one side and the women and children on the other, where most times we would sing acapella, if Mrs. Gentry wasn’t there to play the piano. My Foster Mom would sit and hold my sisters hand and let her lay her head in her lap so she wouldn’t fidget, she dressed us in our Sunday dresses every Sunday. Everyone knew every single person who attended church there. It had an outhouse as the restroom and a space heater for the winter. This is the church where I saw my baby sister for the first time in many, many years. Lisa was taken from our mother as an infant. This is the church that God used to introduce me to my “soulmate and sister”, where we laughed, played and enjoyed the freedom of being children. Free from abuse, neglect and dangerous situations. Easter was celebrated with egg hunts and a potluck meal, where every year that little church would be be filled to the brim during Revival week, where I saw for the first time in my life someone speaking in tongues because she was filled with the holy spirit, where it was a choice to accept Jesus as your savior, your redeemer and to forever follow him! Where I learned to love old gospel music and still to this day have the bible and hymnal that they gave me as a going away present when my family was adopted. My favorite song to this day is I’ll Fly Away! It spoke to me then and speaks to me now.
I was given a precious moment today to remember and to connect with who I am, who I have always been and to remember the WHY behind my life, to remember the LOVE of a stranger that was given to me by God to heal me, to protect me, to show me how to love, who no matter the miles and years between us always loved me.
I have been blessed in this life, I have been healed in this life, I have been shown the way and I know that no matter where this journey takes me I am here to give back what was given to me. LOVE, COMPASSION, JOY, GRATEFULNESS, and HEALING above all else.
