My heart is pounding so it seems I have reached yet another opportunity in my life and I have to choose.  Like so many other similar moments, the questions fly through my consciousness in a whirling tempest of conflict. Do I stay or go? Do I say yes or no? What if I do? What if I don’t? What is best? What is right?

My relationship of the past 20+ years has come to an end. I am in my mid-forties. I can no longer stay where I spent the past half of my life and where I thought I would be forever.  The moving truck is packed with all my possessions and I am about to embark on a new path. It begins with a 1400 mile trek north to a new city and a new career.

So here I stand, staring into the abyss of fear, doubt and uncertainty. As I raise my gaze to the horizon, I see my goal beyond the gap and I can imagine with great clarity how it will be, the celebration of success, the sense of fulfillment that comes from achieving a dream, the new career that shimmers ahead. Yet I am fixated on the amorphous chasm that separates me from my vision.

Some part of me just wants to find my mattress in the truck and fall asleep in hopes that when I wake up it will all be a bad dream and everything will have returned to its former state.

Another part just wants to stand there, frozen in time, adapting to the in-between that doesn’t require anything of me other than to  stand and stare with no compulsion or propulsion. I could adapt. It wouldn’t be the greatest life but it would be predictable and safe.

And then, there is the small voice that rumbles into my awareness. Beyond the insecurities, worry and the fear of the unknown there is that voice of excitement that is pushing me into the driver’s seat of the truck. This voice is tired of me waiting and hesitating at the wrong side of the divide in my life. This voice embraces change as a necessary aspect of growth. This voice has pushed me so many times before – into the cockpit of the airplane for my first solo, out of bed to begin my first solo flight from Florida to Canada, onto the tarmac to join other war-birds for my first formation flight at a national air-show, through training in Voice Dialogue that ultimately lead me to this place where I now stand.

I simultaneously hate and love this voice of my adventurer.  I hate and love the demands its presence elicits from me. I know I have no choice but to collapse into its insistence because I know its wisdom is a clear pointer to the next destination and to the ultimate unfolding of who I am and what I am soul-inspired to do.

And then I remember – the exquisite sense of accomplishment and right action that followed every scary step I took up to this point in time.

Before I know it, I am on the road, my old life in the rearview mirror and my adventurer wildly celebrating a victory. This moment of choice became the most pivotal direction change of my life. As I listened to my heart,  I  simply stopped staring into the abyss and jumped into it. As the saying goes, ‘I took the leap and made my wings on the way down’.

Today, life is beyond anything I could have conjured up in my conscious reality. The journeys from that moment ten years ago to now have had my adventurer sitting on my shoulder in utter ecstasy.  And it continues…. the challenges are met with a dexterity that has grown since that fledgling trip into the unknown.  Somehow there is less hesitation in making choices and a lot more self-reliance evident in life today.  If it is possible to feel bigger while not actually changing size, then that is what has evolved. The child who hesitated at the truck door a lifetime ago has been replaced by the adult driver who is clearly in possession of the map and the route and the journey is made abundantly richer by sharing it with a loving fellow traveler – my husband, Terry.

I have recently begun a new adventure into writing and editing with an online magazine entitled:  Passion Test Daily .   It is an inspiring collection of writings about living your life stoked by passion and purpose. I entered into this endeavor with the usual trepidation but have found a definitive shift in my internal chatter. It is quieter and a more allowing…perhaps because I have made a commitment to finally take a leap and see where I land.

Your life: when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes …from Crossroads Dispatches

Filed under: passion and purpose, personal growth, Spiritual Growth, This Physical Reality, voice dialogue | Tagged: following your heart, leap of faith, life changes, managing change, Passion Test Daily, reward, taking a risk, taking risk |