"Fall in the River Immediately"

This blog post, Stepping Stone Sunday, speaks to me.
Patti Digh says, " Fall in the river immediately...We lose so much by anticipating, fearing, trying to stay dry. Life is wet and now. Messy, sweet messy. Get soaked to the very bone! Then falling becomes less fearful."

Tomorrow is Sunday. I am moving to a new place, a new home.

I am excited, but there is a small undercurrent of fear about what may or may not happen in the days and weeks to come.

So much to do, so much at stake.

But the reason I am so excited is because this is a risk.

It is a thrill to finally follow my heart, and my heart has been speaking to me loudly in the past few weeks. It may be a risk, but, for me, there is no other choice.

While pulling out my old journals and trying to decide what to do with them, I haphazardly opened to a page that I wrote about a week before I went to college, moving away from home for the first time. I had so many fears, so many uncertainties plaguing my mind. I remember that time quite distinctly because I remember thinking later, I did all of that worrying for nothing.

Life happens whether I worry about it or not, and it almost never goes the way I think it will.

It is usually in the days and weeks right before the transition that I do most of my worrying, (aka, obsessive thinking.) I want this new, uncertain thing to get here already so that I can stop thinking about it and get on with my life.

I was feeling that way a few days ago, my mind circling all the possibilities, the numerous ways things could happen. Suddenly, I didn’t want to do that again. So instead, I drove to the park, and I sat in the grass by the lake while the sun was making its descent in the sky.

I just sat there, and I looked, and I listened, and I felt, and I smelled, and I breathed deeply everything that I saw, heard, felt, and smelled.

Slowly, my mind cleared of all the useless clutter. And I felt very peaceful. I wondered why I didn’t figure this out before—the power of nature to clear my mind and remind me that everything will be okay.

So tomorrow, I am moving to a new place. I don’t know what will happen, or how it will happen, but I have an idea. And my heart has a vision.

Beyond that, I will keep reminding myself to clear my mind of all the useless clutter.

Because a month from now, a year from now, I will know that there was nothing to worry about in the first place.