I have lived long enough to know that disruption is inconvenient and many times painful. Actually, most of the time it is painful, and it feels like an oh-so-unnecessary interruption of my life. However, I have also lived long enough to know that sometimes disruption is necessary to turn me around and point me in a different direction.
It reminds me of a child blindfolded, whacking at the air, trying to hit the elusive piñata. Sometimes it is only after a kind adult takes me gently by the shoulders and slowly turns me around that I have any chance at all of swinging in the right direction, hitting my target, and enjoying the benefit of all that raining candy.
It would be great if life were that easy. But maybe not, because I never seem to learn much from easy. It may seem like other people do, but do they really? I think sometimes we get the gentle nudge and the soft turn, but we humans seem to need a lightning bolt or a board upside the head. And sometimes we need it more than once before we learn.
And so what if other people seem to learn the easy way? What does that matter? This is not about changing anyone else. It is about changing me, the only person I really have a chance of changing. I am only responsible for the lessons I am learning, and I also get to determine how many times I whack at that piñata while facing in the wrong direction. How many times will I keep swinging before I allow disruption to give me a new direction?
I have learned not to wait until fear totally subsides before I do something with the disruption. I don’t wait for a perfectly clear path. I start making one, and it is usually plotted out somewhere between my mind and my spirit. There is rarely a map, and besides, we have already determined that I am not particularly good at maps. I swing and fail, and I swing and fail, until eventually I hit something. And if I don’t, I usually learn a big ole lesson from trying.
My growth depends on me. Always has. Always will.
When my first husband left, I was devastated. I was physically sick. I was blindsided, and even though there were signs that I was facing in the wrong direction, I didn’t hear them or feel them until I was the one who got whacked on the head. To be honest, once I connected the dots afterward, I knew I had a HUGE role and responsibility in what had happened. There were things that needed to be reckoned with. There were things I had been seeing that I simply did not want to see.
The lesson was not about seeing everything that was wrong in another human being. It was about being responsible for my part in it. Cleaning my side of the street and becoming more aware of my own direction were the only things I could control. I have wondered many times if I had paid attention back then, would God have needed to totally disrupt my life?
I will never know, and I don’t think it matters anymore.
My life has turned out beautifully.
That disruption led to spiritual growth and hope. It led to a business that has helped me become, helped others become, and allowed me to give to my family and my community. That disruption eventually led me to a relationship with the kindest man I have ever known. So many glorious paths came out of something that, at the time, felt like the end of everything. It gave me a new direction, a new hope, and a new path. One that somehow feels as though it was built just for me.
But maybe even more important than all of that, disruption has a way of clarifying what really matters. And when you begin living a life that is important and authentic to you, you give other people permission to do the same.
I may repeat this story over and over, but I don’t ever want to forget it. There are too many tangible stories in my own life reminding me that disruption is not always a detour. Perhaps, just like adversity, sometimes disruption is the way.
I am still learning and growing, and as long as I am alive, I pray I will remember that my mind and my spirit become stronger when I allow change to happen and then learn from it. Life has shown me over and over that somehow things have a way of working out for my benefit, even when I cannot possibly see it while I am standing in the middle of the disruption.
So as long as I am living, I am going to try to see disruption differently. Not simply as an interruption, but as reinvention. Repurposing. Maybe even a gentle hand on my shoulder turning me toward something I could not yet see.
I have added an affirmation to go along with this Love Note, hopefully to help me, and maybe help you, when life begins turning us in a direction we did not expect. And perhaps, as we learn to recognize those gentle turns in our own lives, we can become that gentle hand on the shoulder of another, lovingly helping them turn toward the good that may be waiting in a direction they cannot yet see.
Disruption, Reinvention
I submit to my divine path
I take all the disruption in my life, and I repurpose it
I waste not a single lesson
What does this teach me?
How do I grow from this?
What am I becoming?
I will move in the direction of my most powerful thoughts
I know that my fear is only a small voice
I know how to use it for my good and the good of others
I am a master at reinvention
I refire, I reframe
I use every obstacle as a step to bigger and better
And a more purposeful life
I am on a divine path of recreation.
And so it is.
