10 Years Later

I have spent a lot of time thinking about writing again - but never really got around to it. 
Partly because life has taken me so many new places the past 10 years that it has been since I last wrote (has it really been that long?) 
10 years older (wiser?!) from 23 to 33 --life sure does fly by. 
Looking back on who I was then and the wants, desires, and hopes I had for the future - the fears that I lived with every day and the dread I had of what may come. I can honestly say I am proud of myself thus for for who I am and what I have accomplished in life. As a person and a professional. 

I am now a small business owner in Victoria BC. miles and miles away from a family I love and everything that was familiar and safe! My home and my family were comfortable and safe - but comfortable and safe was not going to get me what I wanted. I did all the growing up that London Ontario had for me ... so it was time to take everyhing I was taught - all my preconceived notions of my self (and what others thought of me - or in what I thought they though of me) I could leave behind and I could find the room to make the mistakes and have the set backs without judgement of familiarity and ideas of what you were to become - those things in life that can hold us back (without even realizing it). I needing to take all my hurts, the darkness I lived in, and the pain that I hid with me and find a way out, find out who I truly was. I knew, deep down that this was the only way I was going to see what I was made of and who I was without anything holding me back, where the only thing that could hold me back was me. 

Victoria took me in immediately (but not in the ways I expected). This process was not  warm and fuzzy - it was not comfortable and soft - but, it was necessary. Like a teacher you loved to hate ... hard on you because he/she knew you were capable of greatness - you just needed to learn that for your self before you believed... 
Therefore - it helped me grow up. . . fast and find out who I was. 

It was a leap of faith that brought me here to figure that out - and what I learned in the process is that us as humans can truly do anything we want - if we only have the desire and the will to see it through. 
There will be set backs, hardships, even failures - but ultimately if you don't see failures as the end and you keep your eye on the future and what you believe you are capable of I can promise you this much - you will not be disappointed in the end. Life is funny that way - at no point can you be content - and at no point can you think you are entitled to anything. You have to work for it - every single day - work towards your goals and always set new ones ahead of those ... only then can you truly stretch yourself to new heights. 

The bigggest things I learned - that the darkness stumbling and inner struggles, life  does not stop... as we keep moving through life and pushing ourselves further - the darkness only has moments of light that seeps through for tiny fractions of a second and if we don't keep our eyes open and looking for those glimpses then we can miss them... (but, also you need to also understand that it is the end of the world if you do miss something, you can always catch the next one) 
God finds a way to catch your attention in another way if you miss the subtle ones, but if you keep missing them - then you usually get a knock upside the head to wake you up.

I keep coming back to this quote because it seems to encapsulate my life these days... 

 Listen to your life.See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness : touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden part of it,because in the last analysis all moments are key moments,and life itself is grace." --Frederick Buechner

Take that in for a moment and reflect on all that is... Grace.. what a beautiful and awe inspiriting concept..

Without Grace I am not sure where I would be - but I know it wouldn't be a pretty place.. yet it allowed me to have enough belief in my self to come out here and then the strength to believe once I got here that I could make it (and by make it .. I do refer to the lifelong journey that  "making it" requires - as one does not just "make it" and then arrive at a destination .... but continue to seek to become a better and more complete person). 

So, I guess I can end this here for now - as I could rant about forever right now - but I will be back now that I have started this writing train .. and I promise it won't be 10 years before I am