It was the beginning of December and I was visiting family for our Christmas. There can be about thirty of us when we’re all together so it helps to book these events before the holidays get super busy.
I was still quietly nursing that feeling of so much being new in my life, so I was welcoming family and my favorite time of the year. There’s also one relative’s house in particular that channels all of my love for Christmas and then some, multiplied by about a hundred fold.
At least I come by it naturally…
And that was just one room.
Each room at their place has a different theme every year, with garland around the door frames having a separate theme as well. It’s really not Christmas until I see my family and my Aunt and Uncle’s house all decorated; No matter what’s happening in my life, the love it takes to put into the Christmas celebration and that home grounds me during the busiest month of the year.
Leaving early on Sunday morning after the party, meant that detours to the lake I visited in the summer could be taken. I couldn’t wait to breathe in the peace of the waves and exhale the rest.
It was a grey day, the steel blue skies over the lake not dark enough to stop the lake’s greens from putting on a beautiful show.
While on the way home, I stopped for a coffee before the long drive ahead of me. It gave me a chance to savor the last bits of the beauty of seeing family. The world around us can uproot us so easily and finding that sense of home somewhere is so vital to hold onto. It filled my heart with so much joy and I couldn’t remember sleeping as well as I did the night before leaving town to go back to the city.
Looking around the coffee shop while waiting for my drink, I spotted some LGBTQ2+ friendly posters which made this lesbian SUPER happy. My attention span drifting as it often does without direction, I looked at other community event flyers and walked over to pickup my coffee shortly afterwards and as if on cue, I spotted a heart.
With more change simmering and beginning to reveal what could come about, I found so much comfort in that little heart making an appearance. Worrying was easy, but going with the flow and learning as much as I could was something else entirely.
I was reminded of lessons from A Course in Miracles, stating that nothing in our lives is truly real because we give everything the meaning it has and that meaning isn’t a fixed state. What change means to me is completely different to someone else, so how could I know for sure that an outcome was worth fearing if I gave everything meaning, as ACIM states? It means that I could either make something better or worse based on what I chose to think about it.
Placing my coffee into the cup holder and looking around the town roundabout, I realized I could go with the flow or keep paddling upstream. I was making events more or less threatening based on how I defined them, without allowing them to play out and when I put the key in the ignition to head home I committed myself to making meaning that nurtured me, rather than draining me any further.
All that love, from finding a heart.
❤
Cheryl
The Finding Hearts Project 