Coming Out Of The Darkness

The change that is coming into my life this next year is inevitable, but unlike the changes I’ve experienced these past few years, at least I know this one is coming. I’d like to be prepared when I meet it but everything is so up in the air, it’s hard to know what to expect, therefore hard to prepare.

I used to study the Tarot and do readings for friends many years ago, and while I’ve never put much faith in their ability to divine the future, I do think they can be a wonderful way of helping us focus on issues. Just what I need: focus! So with it being the eve of a new year, I thought I would do a simple reading for myself and select one card on which to focus and draw strength in the new year.

I drew The Lovers.



On the surface, this card speaks to the love between a man and woman, meeting your other, finding your soul mate. On another level, it’s about giving yourself completely to an experience that can and will change your life forever, not because you think it’s the right thing to do, but because you feel it so deeply, so intensely, you have no choice but to give yourself to it and to let your heart lead the way. And in that sense, it’s about letting go of control… and fear. Reason may tell you not to got there but, then, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.” (Blaise Pascal)

Love is what happens when we let go of the fear, pain, and doubt that keeps us in darkness. Love brings us into the light.

I’m not looking for a soul mate. My other waits for me in the next life. But I am hoping to fall in love... with Life. I miss the joy and passion with which I once lived. I miss the meaning and purpose my life once had. I want to feel that I’m part of something bigger. I want to belong.

As cliché as it may sound, my husband completed me. He was everything I wasn’t, and vice versa, and we fit together like Yin and Yang. I haven’t felt whole since I lost him. All the places inside me that he once filled were replaced with fear, doubt, and pain from wounds I sometimes think will never heal. But in focusing on The Lovers, I have hope in god’s plan for my life; hope that there’s a place where I belong, where I can feel whole again. It means trusting Life and god, and leaning not unto my own understanding. It means surrendering reason, and feeling my way through the darkness.

Wish me luck.

Every Man's Life Is A Plan Of God

I'm transitioning again. From my last life to this life, I'm now on the move to my next life. It's been less than three years, and I've never known such changes.

That first life lasted about twenty-five years, and it was a good life - the best! There was love there, comfort and security, family. God was everywhere, in every breath I took. My life was his, wholly and completely, and I never regretted a day of it. Life was beautiful. Then it ended. My husband died, and that life was over. I lost my home, my friends, and more importantly, my identity. I had been half of a team, a wife and mom. Now I was just a mom, and I was alone.

I had lost my best friend, with whom I had hoped to grow old. I lost my job; his work was my work. As my friends slowly faded back into their well-rounded and undisturbed lives, I eventually lost my faith. Coping emotionally and financially has been a long, lonely, and difficult educational process. I’m a C student, at best. Make that a D. After the original financial upheaval in which I acquired a good bit of debt, circumstances turned worse and the debt mounted from unexpected sources until I’m now forced to sell my home in this life to escape it. Life has not been kind here. In fact, she’s been downright cruel.

But as perfect as that first life was, I realize now I didn’t belong there. Well I did, but only for as long as it lasted. I don’t belong here either. This was just a place to grieve and rest… and learn, and now it’s time to move on to my next life. And that one is sure to be very different! My daughter is away in college now, and my son will be joining her soon. My aloneness will be complete.

Despite the sorrow that paved the way from my last life to this one, I started out with great faith and great hope. I don’t have much of either anymore, but I have a little. And a little is as good as a feast, they say. My life has never been my own; it has always belonged to god. Even if I don’t know where I’m going, he does.