As long as you keep moving forward, one step at a time, the destination will arrive. Actually, many destinations will arrive, with many different paths to choose from along the way. It’s like we are on a buffet line with unlimited tastes and sensations - and we can sample them all.

There are not right or wrong choices. Anything you put on your plate has its own flavor, its own lesson. It is only through awareness that we can eventually make the decision to take what we like, and reach for the thing that aligns with our truth.

Along our path, during our many choices, endeavors, falls, and come-backs, we might feel alone, as if we are failing and grasping, sometimes just doing our best to hang on.

Uncomfortable emotions and sensations arrive, and we feel the pull of regret or an observation that we have made a poor choice. We might even feel that beyond the choice itself, that WE are inherently flawed or misguided.

You are not flawed, and there is nothing wrong with you. We do not get handed a roadmap to life on the day we are born, so that we never have to experience the sting of pain, loss, and regret. Our true experience, and our true purpose for living, lies in our ability to taste and savor it all - the grief, the anger, the frustration, as well as the joy, excitement, and love.

Not many are able to cheer you along, not really. Of course we all have friends and family who will comfort and support us.

But,

The honest acknowledgment of your truth and your integrity must come from within.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), we can’t see the miracle when we are in the thick of it. We cannot see light in the middle of darkness. We cannot see blessings in the middle of crisis. Occasionally, in a ray of sunshine, or a passing cloud, or the perfectly gnarled branch of a tree, we can sense that we are ok, and that we are held. Nature, or sychronicities, provide some relief along the way. But we are not revealed the entire picture until we fiercely and bravely walk the path, as best we know how at that time.

As we walk through the fire, stepping on hot coals and allowing some flames to even consume us along the way, we are that much closer to being shown the miracle on the other side. And remember, often walking forward means sitting still. When we don’t know what to choose, when we don’t know the next right move, when we simply can’t take anymore, this is the time to sit down. To refrain from battling, pushing and doing, and to just be. To allow the flames to burn and sear, to remove old layers and shed the past, to let the swell of grief rise up inside us, pull on our chest and pour out of our bodies as tears.

This is the time to finally open our arms in defeat and say, “I can’t. I can’t do this alone.”

Often, as we sit in surrender, the miracle shows up.