There will be times when you have to look directly at what you have avoided for so long. The reality that the thing you most fear is the only way out. That the only path is to dare the lightning. We can feel it every time we approach. It’s the event that will cause everything to change, will bring on Armageddon, will rain down destruction and do what nothing else can, cause us to cease existing. In one moment all we are, all we have achieved and become, everything will be incinerated. There will be no reprieve and no redemption. There will be nothing but ashes, smoke, and the wind.
Is it any wonder that we do everything in our power to prevent this from happening? I don’t know how many conversations I’ve heard and been a part of where someone explains the bad situation they are in and then bemoans the fact that they can’t seem to get out of it. They know they need to leave, to change things, to move on, but they can’t seem to. All the while you can see the storm clouds moving in and feel the electric charge building up above their head. People looking in from the outside can’t understand why abused women stay and even go back. They look at children and victims of extreme religious sects and wonder why they suffered through horrendous situations for so long. They don’t smell the lightning that was hovering round their heads. The lightning bolt from the heavens that would destroy them if they put one foot out of place.
And these lightning bolts do fall. When the word of doom is said, when the truth rings out and the mic has dropped with an emphatic thud or a terrified clatter, the lightning falls. Sometimes it comes from the direction we thought it would. The people who hold power over us let the hammer drop and the world shatters around us. Sometimes it zots from inside us. All that pent-up fear along with the fight/flight energy of combat and defense implodes within us in a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes all we get is a tiny spark. That’s all there ever was. Our fears were far more potent than any response could be. But in all of these situations the truth remains, we cease to exist. Who we were before turns to ashes and smoke blown by the wind. What remains is better. The extraneous burnt away. The amazing inner core, like a seed which needs extreme heat to open, burst forth and we come out to a new world raw, exposed, and free.
There will be times when you have to look directly at what you have avoided for so long. You have a choice, to continue as you have been or to let the lightning strip you of what no longer is you, exposing your new life. This time, will you brave the storm?
