the light is sweet

The Light is Sweet, Jan Luyken, 1687

My mystery chronic illness started many years ago, when my kids were younger and we were still moving from army house to army house. At that time, I was very fit, lean and muscular. I was eating all of the right food and working out pretty much every day. Then I started getting this weird feeling in my body and my joints ached. Working out became a drain instead of a source of joy. Fatigue settled in and energy moved on out. 

What came after that was years and years of searching for answers. I was able to tie certain foods into the feelings in my body. Doctor after doctor, healer after healer had their way with me. For years I put my health and my care into the hands of others. But, I reasoned, they were “alternative healers” so that was different. It wasn’t different. It was the same thing, subbing in supplements for pharmaceuticals. Eventually, I realised that there were to be no answers there. Or, maybe I should say, not the answers I was satisfied with. So, instead of expecting them to fix me, I began to question my own certainties. I opened myself up to whatever came my way. I made a promise to God and myself that when things came my way, I would have the courage to step into them and check things out. That bode well for me. The more I stepped into the offerings of my life, the more my path righted itself.

I began to notice how people, situations, environments and tasks made me feel. I started cultivating relationships, even if just a few, with people that inspired me or touched me or were just willing to be open and thoughtful. And that cultivation of relationships extended to the ones most meaningful to me - the ones I had with my family and the one I have with myself. 

For the vast majority of my adult life, I had spent my days ruling myself with an iron fist. I learned that in the military. Before my time in the army, I lacked structure and discipline, and most of all, confidence. The military gave me those things. To put it more accurately, I earned confidence in the army by understanding how structure and discipline called me to a higher version of myself. A version I thought unattainable in my previous world of low expectations. But that approach, one of discipline and accountability, became my framework in which I built myself a tidy little place to live. I had to have discipline to get things done. If I wasn’t taking care of myself properly, I needed to do that by being stricter! If I was depleted and didn’t want to work out, I was lazy. If I was struggling with anything, I hadn’t done what needed to be done! Best get yourself in order, soldier!

I don’t even think I realised I had arrived in that place. Sometimes, being who we are seems to us an unmovable thing. I am me. The end. But I’ve always believed in our capacity to evolve and shift who we are. I am faced with the evidence of that every day in my life. I have a strong, loving, playful, joyous marriage. I never saw that growing up. I live on a farm and we grow and raise all of our own food - we pulled that one out of our dreams, too. I have a strong relationship with my daughters and an old farmhouse that hugs me everyday. Those things too, were things I desired but was never fully sure, by way of example or roadmap, how to achieve. 

It turns out that a lot of these things just require faith. It’s the same approach to get us to a zillion different destinations - faith and action in that faith. I have that. Once you build that practice and that way of being, you will find that you can superimpose it on all manner of problem. It doesn’t matter what comes up because you know it’s not your problem to solve. You just have to hold your intention as prayer and have the trust in yourself that when new things come up, you will pay attention. You will act on them. Even if they are very, very different than what you think you know. Because, as it turns out, those are usually the best things that come our way.

After years, decades really, of restriction and building structures of “healing” around me, I’ve come to a totally different place in my life. It’s one of those doors that appeared and I’ve walked in. And it’s a crazy, wonderful place. 

Over the last few years of living my days with the grief of our daughter’s death, I made the decision that this life of mine would be a saturated one. I wonder now how I ever thought I would find the fullness of my life by trimming and clipping away at it mercilessly. Always looking for that thing to remove or cut out or restrict or withhold. As if nirvana was waiting to be revealed with the next blow of the chisel. I had become my own lion tamer, whipping the snarling, unsatisfied beast whenever she dare sniff around the unlocked door.

I want my life as it is, yes, and I want it saturated, thick and juicy, with the people and the things that I love in it. The difference between my routine, regular life and my fulfilling, spirited, saturated life is only one thing - me.

I make the decision to see as I want to see. I make the decision to say yes to the offerings of time and love. I make the choice of how much I will weigh indiscretions and gifts. I hold in me the capacity to give love and joy to the people I love. I can decide to see what is missing or live in the overflowing. I choose to recognise and celebrate the abundance of life.

My peace and belonging is in alignment with God’s creation in intimate and quiet ways. It’s a beautiful path lush with spring’s fat blossoms and winter’s quiet nights sleeping in a tent covered in snow. It’s been canoe paddles down gorges with mountains of rocks squeezing us in. It’s been living under sunshine so I can soak up those beams and radiate them back out from myself. I am nourished by place, by seasons, by the earth under my bare toes. I remind myself to hold my daughters and touch my husband. I share with them the beautiful things I see in them. Life is good. No, life is gorgeous. 

And still…

And still I hear that drill sergeant in my mind. Still I am encumbered and controlled by ideas that lay entrenched and unexamined in my own psyche. I am a child of the open skies, but somewhere in there is the overseer berating me for one thing or another. Every day I listen for her voice. I recognise it well, but I don’t resonate with it anymore. She was a faithful ally when I needed her. I accomplished much from a place of scarcity. I am grateful, but I am moving on to the real world where the real me lives in the real truth - there is no scarcity. 

I’m not interested in those tales anymore. I’m not intrigued by the quick fixes or the bullet points. There’s nothing real in there. I would love to hear your story, but it’s not mine and I don’t want it to be. I want my unique story. I hope you want yours. Shouldn’t someone tell us that at some early point in our lives? Shouldn’t we know how beautifully we can illustrate the story of our lives no matter the heartbreak or sorrow within those pages? 

I can’t live in scarcity because there is no such thing. God has given us abundance and all else is a falsehood. I have made the choice to live my life life in honour of this remarkable gift of life. I will not submit to the fables and dictates of corporations and governments that sell the lie of shortage. I will not walk into their prison by tacit agreement. They can offer whatever they like, but I hold the power of consent. And my spirit, my joy, my wonder are not on offer. These things that make me me, that bring me peace and fill my life with love were given to me in trust. I must take care of them, feed them, cherish them. They’re not casual things to bandy about.

All has come up for review in my life. Again and again and again. As it should be. I’m no longer willing to restrict the foods I eat. I can no longer behave in ways that limit my energy and my enthusiasm for this life. I’m not interested in models of health that call for limiting and withholding. For all these decades I have shaped myself around rules and guidelines to be well. It turns out, I had only walked myself into a trap. Now, here I am, walking out under my own steam, looking about and realising a whole new level of capacity. I must be somewhere along the menopause train given my age, but I have no symptoms of such. I am positive, joyful, and excited by this new path in my life. 

My marriage has all of me. My children have all of me. My grandchild and those to come, will know me as a loving, silly woman because that is what I am feeding in myself. I can’t be those things if I am not those things to myself. I’ve let go now of those tight restrictions that I once thought were all that were keeping me on the right path. I can understand now that they were just keeping me on THE path that was familiar. Meanwhile, all sorts of offshoots are waiting. What will be there? A wild river? Maybe a treehouse in the forest? Maybe all my loves, waiting for me on a picnic blanket. Maybe I will be there - me, the real me, curious and enlivened by all the possibilities that await. Saturated in all of it. That’s how I’m choosing to live. 

Author’s note: I’ve included a little audio addendum to this essay where I talk about some of the changes I’ve made in my life that have made some profound impacts on my health and my outlook on life. All paid members should have received a link to that audio clip in their inboxes or it can be accessed via the homepage.