what is that you're clinging to anyway??

it'll happens sometimes.
the pain of the world will just overwhelm me.
i'll hear one too many stories,
or witness one too many things,
or sit with a friend and feel their pain so much,
that i will get overwhelmed with the pain of the world.

on the outside, you'll see calm.
you might hear acceptance and love and even strength.
cause i can offer that.

but on the inside, sometimes, i'm like a little girl - she's
clinging to a mast of a huge sailing boat with a storm pounding all
around her. wind blowing everywhere, rain pelting down, and the
little girl screaming and crying and holding on for dear life.

that was the visual that came to me this weekend.
that's what i felt like on the inside.
altho no one could tell looking at me.

life is filled with so much pain, and i just didn't know how to hold that.
i got off center and wanted to find my way back to some kinda ground.

i chose to take that visual outside with me, and go rake some leaves
and try to get centered with living. try to get to a place where i understood
again that it's an incredible journey here that we are a part of.

turns out i think this leaf raking is going to be some awesome therapy.
good thing too, as i do believe i'll be raking til next spring...

so i raked and i thought and saw the picture of the girl clinging to the mast.

okay, terri.....what's the mast? what is that?

and i saw that it was my wishes for what i wanted life to be.
it was how i wanted life to work out.

i was clinging to something that didn't exist - to an illusion.

woe.

that stopped me mid-rake.

you're clinging to an illusion.

and i could see that.
i could really see that.

and then this little voice whispered -
the storm is an illusion as well.

i started raking again.
faster.

curious and interested and even a little bit nervous.

what's the ship represent? i asked myself.

what you travel in....how you travel.....
that kinda thing.

which doesn't have to be one thing that's always the same, i thought -
it doesn't always have to be this big ol' rickety sailing ship....it can change
forms....

it really really depends on your confidence, your beliefs, your focus.
all that makes up your ship.

the storm, of course, was the pain.

i raked and thought about the illusions that i cling to.
i wondered where this got me.
i wondered about the pain and the different angles of looking at it.
i wondered about the different traveling vessels, and what i could
make them into.

i tucked this all into my pocket and headed back inside.

driving later, i put a few things together.
i had talked to a friend earlier about it.
he happened to call and ask how i was.
knowing he'd get what was going on inside me, i leaped into it with him.
he paused. listened. thought.
he responded with the idea that  i 'already served' and how then the other thing i
needed to do was let go of others' pain.
i substituted 'offering' for serve......

touched that a bit. knew it was echoing something in me.......

and while driving, i thought about how you HAD to let go of holding all this stuff
if you were gonna offer - really really offer - because holding all this
stuff makes you closed and tight and you can't offer like that.
you need to open.

and then i thought about offering when you're open and when you truly truly
just want to offer for offering's sake - the pure giving of love.

that's when you touch god, i think.

that really hit me.

and as i drove, i teared up thinking of that.

and it occurred to me - even the offering is probably an illusion -
whatever that means.
maybe that means don't get too hung up in it.
don't take it too seriously or trip into ego or think it's more than it is.
maybe just understand it's the act of offering that matters.
because it's in there that's the god part.

the touching god part - for me, for what i believe, that part is the only thing
that's real.

that's the part i want.

i stopped at a light and just held my hands to my face thinking of all this.

i felt electric inside.
so much different than what i had felt earlier.
i felt electric with the wanting to touch god..........

i didn't understand a darn thing,
but my focus had changed
and i felt humbled, alive, electric.

what a difference raking leaves can make........