Running and Chasing Shadows

When I was a child, I remember playing a game with my shadows.  I would either try to avoid stepping on my shadow or try hiding in my shadow.  I would run from my shadow and try to catch my shadow.  I would stand in my Mom or Dad's shadows.  I was amazed by shadows, how they changed, how they moved with me.  Peter Pan fell into line, when he lost his shadow.  I remember watching the sun change and the shadows grow longer, my shadow riding beside me on its shadow bicycle.  Those are the shadows I played with.

But there are shadows in life that we all have that we do not want to confront.  These are the shadows we either run from or chase away.  They could be things we have seen, experienced or fought from the past.  Unfortunately, as they have helped shape who we are as people, we carry them into the present and will carry them into the future.  How do we face these things?

I have many shadows in my past that I wish I could erase.  I regret things I passed up in life and I regret choices I have made.  I know we aren't suppose to regret life (it's true, life is way too short!), but believe me, it is difficult to overlook.  I can't ignore the bad relationships I have been in.  They helped me realize what it means to be in a good relationship.  I can't ignore the opportunities I have passed up in my life because it reinforces that you have to take chances.  So how do I face these things in the past without letting it ruin my future?

Being open.

Too commonly, we hide in our shadows or simply, hide our shadows.  But hiding the shadows or hiding in them does not give us consolation.  It exacerbates the problem.  If we live in a dark place in life, how can we love how far we have come?  I face my shadows through my relationship.  My fiance has been monumental in helping me come to terms with what I have faced in my past.  The abuse, the self-esteem problems I have developed.  One of the biggest shadows, my shadow Boogieman, if you will, is that I have had peers tell me I would be better off to kill myself.

I have been teased, taunted and tortured.  But with the help of my family and friends, my fiance and through this blog, I am able to face my shadows and be open with what I have experienced.  What is your outlet?  Do you vent when you feel a shadow pulling you into its darkness?  You have to consider that these shadows are like living Depression, following you around.  It can catch your ankles and pull you into its overcast, not leaving any desire to play in the shadows as you did as a child.  But if we can take command of the shadows, we can better explore them when we have to be pulled into them.

As seen below, nothing is ever as it appears.  What may appear one way in the daylight is something completely different in moonlight.  But sometimes, moonlight is the only way to face what we don't want to face.  Moonlight casts a light on things that we can't deny.  Be it by moonlight or daylight, sunlight or rooted in darkness, don't run from your shadows.  Ask to take someone's hand and jump into them.  Only then can they cease having power over us.

Snow-Covered Dream

This weekend has been wild and the weather matched it to a T.  My fiancé and I woke on Sunday morning to a dreary day, planning to travel to Roanoke, VA to have a birthday celebration with one of his cousins.  Not even an hour later, I look out the window and snow was falling in heavy flakes onto the ground.  The world began to look colder.  We hurried to get to church only to find that services had been cancelled.  The birthday party was frozen, much as the world around us.  We decided to venture there, anyways, to visit his parents.

We had a glorious time.  I love my future in-laws greatly.  But the snow kept worrying me to no end.  What if we can't get out, I think.  What if I can't get to work?  What then?  My fiancé tried with all his might to calm me, but to no avail.  I had swung into a mini panic attack...OVER WORK!

I told him he wouldn't understand and I truly don't think he ever would.  How do you explain to someone that missing work is giving you a panic and anxiety attack?  That you feel your duty to your place of employment so strongly that it makes you feel sick to miss it.  Or how even when you are sick, you try everything in your will to get there or last there.  We got home safely and I am sitting in my pod, safely.  No worries, no anxiety.

Work seems to be like a constant in my life.  My father taught me a strong work ethic.  You look and ask for work if you don't have anything to do.  That is called job security.  When you have questions about things, you learn about it until you can't understand and then you ask for help.  That is called ambition.  Did my learning such a strong and powerful ethic cause me to go too extreme?

My fiancé would tell you that I am a worry wart.  Shoot, I would confess to that as well!  I worry constantly.  And yet, I tell the people around me to not worry about things they have no feasible control over.  So why can't I embrace that as well?

Saturday night, I had an interesting dream.  I was biking on a path and people were constantly biking around me.  I was moving slowly, but it was hilly as well.  And the hills got steeper and steeper until I finally reached a hill that was insurmountable on my own accord.  I felt myself rolling back and closed my eyes.  All of a sudden, I felt something pushing me up.  I was not peddling or using any of my own force.  I found myself at the top of the hill.  Furthermore, the top of that hill turned out to be the top of a mountain where no one else could reach.  I stopped there and gazed out in this view that no one else could or would ever witness and gasped.  I could see from shore to shore, boats in the harbor and houses in the villages around me.  I took pictures, inhaling the air and feeling the warm breeze.

Then, I woke up.

When I told my fiancé, he interpreted it the same way I did.  Perhaps it is God's way of telling me that nothing is insurmountable if I trust.  And I know I have a hard time trusting Him sometimes.  I worry and fret when truly, there is no reason.  If it is in His hands, He will find a way.  Maybe not now, not tomorrow or not for several years.  But it will happen...in His time.  But, until my time or your time comes to discover what is the answer, enjoy a thing called, "La Vie."