I have spent two and a half years preparing to move across country. It has not been easy.
When I told my spiritual advisor I wanted to move because I hate it here, she responded, “I don’t want you leaving till you’re happy there. I don’t want you running from something; I want you running toward something.”
The advice was sound, despite years of my working hard at being happy here. So I set about finding more happiness. Mind you, this place hadn’t made me completely forlorn. I’d had immense joy and self-fulfillment. And I’m aware that happiness is an inside job. There’s just a lot here I loathe. I needed to make peace with it.
A year later, I’d reached far greater contentment, acceptance, and fulfillment. I still hate it here, because it’s not a healthy nurturing environment for me, but my advisor said I’d done the needed work. I agree! No matter how much inner growth we achieve, some circumstances do not suit us, and we’re not spiritually mandated to stay in them.
I put a move into the works. It was going to be slow going, what with the multiple sclerosis. For example, I can’t pack boxes, so my caretakers did it, bit by bit, when they had time after washing the dishes, etc.
Move ahead a year and a half of pushing forward, despite illness. Last week, my house was days from be putting on the market. (Note: This blog was written first week of March. For the record, things have progressed since I wrote it. For example, I’ve taken more steps to overcome the challenges discussed.)
Long story short, two (not one but two!) major roadblocks to the move manifested last week. One involved a best friend throwing me under the bus. After a good cry, I called my realtor yesterday, and told her I need to delay showing the house for a week or so, while I figure out what to do.
I’m a person willing to face difficulties and take risks. I do not expect everything to be easy. But the sudden unforeseeable roadblocks created unhealthy risks, should I move. Not that I’m giving up the move. I’m just trying to figure things out. Unless God makes the road easier, by removing those two roadblocks, there’s too much risk.
Let me be clear, I’m no quitter. It took 10 years of starts and stops to produce my Goddess music album but, when it came out, SageWoman magazine dubbed it an album every Pagan should own. I’m good with follow through over the long haul.
I just need a little break, some clarity, and a smoother road. I need the move to, after all this work, become easy.
I prayed for a sign to guide me.
Ready for this? Here I am, my house days from being on the market, everything set up to showcase it, and my roof started leaking last night. What?!
It may need major repair. Plus, it leaked in the room that holds most of the packed boxes, so they had to be hauled into other rooms, messing up the lovely showcasing that took immense effort. Plus, I expect a bunch of repair guys today in muddy boots traipsing over my newly washed wall-to-wall carpeting.
Sometimes God’s messages are just too weird and too clear! God’s made it obvious my decision to delay putting the house on the market for a week or two is right.
But a leaking roof does not make things easy. Quite the opposite. After being emotionally thrown to the ground by someone I trusted more than almost anyone else on the planet, and everything else that happened this past week, last night’s drip drip drip so overwhelmed me that I felt devastated.
God, I wish You could’ve chosen a pleasant way to convey your message! I asked for a happy sign—some ease, a cleared path—not another burden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know God doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear, but it’s been an awful week.
I wrote this blog because writing is a way I find solutions. I also wrote it because I need the sense of camaraderie that occurs when we tell our problems.
I also wrote it in hopes that delineating current challenges would provide a spring board for me to create a positive message for you. If I’m going to blog about my angst, I try to use it as a jumping board to empower the reader and myself. But, when I got to this point in the blog, I thought, “I have nothing to offer a reader. I’m just an emotional basket case, who is angry at God.”
Then anger kicked in. That changed everything: I remembered I’m a warrior.
I remembered that Exu, a God who owns my head, is considered so dangerous that Brazilians will not put an altar to Him inside a house. He loves explosions.
I remembered the other African Deity who owns my head is Oxala. She clears the way with the power of a blizzard, the weight of a mountain, and the ease of talcum powder blown from my fingertip.
I remembered my magic is so strong that I earned the Faerie title Master of the Arts.
I remembered I’m a De Grandis, descended from a line of shamans bred for their psychic powers over centuries’ time. We are proud dragons wearing purple and aged leather.
I remembered I know so many secret magical techniques and powers—information near impossible to find—that one greed-ridden Pagan tradition goes to great lengths to discredit my knowledge, so they get students instead of me.
I remembered that, no matter how many spies they send to my home, they’ll only learn the smallest bit of my power, let alone glean the pure love that radiates from its center, making me unstoppable.
I thought, “Making things easy it’s not the same as being a doormat. God is showing me a clearing. One mighty blow from Thor’s hammer can sweep away obstacles, to make the path easy. As can one explosion from Exu, one snowstorm from Oxala.
But my Gods require one decisive spell from me. (They don’t usually require this before clearing the way. For reasons there is not space here to explain, my Gods require it now because of my current external factors and inner landscape.)
Keyword decisive. Long story short, decisiveness is dangerous in my current circumstances, unless my heart is pure, my intent free of wrongdoing intent.
Last week, someone told me the wall of thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty could be penetrated by someone “of the purest intent…Those whose hearts were not so pure and whose intentions were less than honorable, found themselves snared in … vicious spines with their flesh torn.”
For months, I’ve hacked my way through the wall of thorns to get to the beauty of my new home. I ain’t stopping now! It’s time to further purify my heart. And then take the decisive act that will finally move through the thicket. It will be easy. Easy as one decisive exhalation of my breath. So mote it be!
