Wings Calling

And not for the first time. I was born with them. Maybe you were too?

Photo by Dennys Hess on Unsplash

I’ve been here before – but not exactly here.

Once, in my early 40’s I was working in a job that felt like torture. I couldn’t make the thing work. I was hired to change everything – people, process, numbers. I knew I could do it because I had never failed before. What could go wrong?

I would not quit, taking my laptop home, barely stopping to notice it was time to eat or make love or sleep. If I could just spend a little more time planning, everything would be ok.

I took some time off one weekend, and streamed a movie with my sister. I had missed work on Friday, because I had a bad headache. Sinus infection.

Saturday night, I felt better, thus the movie with sister Valerie. Sunday morning I woke up, got up. Fell down.

ER. Not lucid. Husband and family panicked. Spinal tap. High fever. Excruciating headache.

Diagnosis: viral meningitis. I was certain I was dying, the long slow death by explosion of blood vessels bursting in my head, one at a time, like firecrackers.

I didn’t die, but learned the stress of my job was killing me. I went back to work, and asked for an exit plan – and then I got one I wasn’t expecting. I got fired.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me though I certainly didn’t know it then.

This led to my career as a life and business coach – a spiritual adventure lasting 16 years.

Then, it was time to walk my mom home. The spiritual journey where I got to dig into both her psyche and my own, repairing and exploring and meandering into what it means to get to the end of a life, to become motherless. All other things were left on the roadside. This job took everything.

Now, I’m at another spiritual crossroads, where I imagine I’m a bowling ball sliding down the slippery lane that the future has prepared for me. When the ball hits the pins, I’m noticing what is left standing. In this game what’s left standing wins, rather than a clean strike when all the pins go down.

I’m clearing out the petrified beliefs that got me here but are not meant to stay. I’m refining my connection with source, blocking out the fear voices that will stop me from traveling the path of my destiny.

We are at a collective crossroads and what I bring to these epic times has been coming down the birth canal for decades. I have sensed it, smelled it, imagined the shape my life would someday take. I’ve denied it, been afraid of what will need to be released for this path to unfold.

It’s here now, and no amount of trepidation can stop it. I’m a rolling river.

I had a dream last night about wings – I tried 3 different pairs of them, and none would lift me up to fly the way I had expected. The first pair of wings were too small to carry me. The second were loose and like yarn, stretching and dripping down my arms. Not sturdy. The third was stiff like glue.

I’m still finding my way, discovering the strength and shape of the wings I was born with, for this time, for this purpose, for this life.