Weathered

I was looking back through some of my thoughts that I have written in the past and read "life is like a room with no ceiling. .. the possibilities upward are endless, but sometimes you will have to face the weather." I can remember exactly what I was feeling when I wrote those words three years ago. I wanted more for my life. I wanted to wake up every day understanding that I was going to keep pushing forward and upward, and I needed to do this regardless of what others thought, regardless of what they saw or said, and regardless of my circumstances. I think sometimes we get stuck in this holding pattern where we wait for the time to be just perfect before we make our next move. We will do this after that happens and so forth. We are living in a time of such uncertainty for so many, including ourselves, yet we still wait.

I am one of those people that will welcome the rain. I mean that quite literally. I am just as happy to take a walk in the rain as I am in the warm sunshine. My neighbors drive by laughing as my children and I will be the first to run outside and get completely drenched and splash each other in the puddles. We will stay out there usually until it stops and then laugh as we go slipping across the tile floor in the kitchen while we try to peel the layer of soaked cotton from our pruned bodies. Weather is a tricky thing, and sometimes we have to take shelter. Other times we just chose not to embrace it. I mean this literally and figuratively. When we are faced with hard times and uncertainty, we will often just wait it out or avoid it all together. We don't talk about how we feel because we don't want to upset someone, or we don't go for the shot because we are afraid we are going to miss. We have often heard people talk about the glass ceiling that needs shattered, but that is still protection from the elements. What if we just removed the ceiling all together and let the rain, the snow, the sunshine and everything else just come on it. We could find the building blocks to start working our way upward, and find the mechanisms needed to push through.

We should learn to trust our intuition through difficult times and through our decision making processes. I like to think of a tornado siren sounding as you would find yourself heading for shelter as soon as it rings out. Would you ignore the tornado siren? Chances are most of us wouldn't, but we still choose to ignore the voice inside that tells us NO don't do that, or YES take the chance. I think we do this out of fear of what others will think or how it will change our lives. Often times we look back on those moments and think, if I would have just went with my gut I wouldn't be where I am today. We have to stop being afraid of change. Most often one decision along the way would have changed our whole outcome. We fear change because it is so uncertain, but life is always going to be uncertain. We also choose to ignore the red flags, even if they are right in front of our face, waving in seventy mile per hour wind. Stop acting like they don't exist! They are a warning just as loud as the tornado siren, listen to them. This isn't limited to people. This goes for any aspect of your life.

I ask you to stop waiting for everything to line up perfectly before you take a chance on something that could change your whole life. Listen to your intuition and for goodness sake, do not ignore the red flags. Allow yourself to become comfortable with the weather and just how quickly it can change. This doesn't mean that your clothes won't get wet, or that you won't feel like running for cover, but embrace it. Find the path forward and keep moving. If we can learn to face the weather along the way, our possiblities really can be endless.