Stumbling Through a Labyrinth

  It occurs to me this morning that my journey for the last thirty five years has indeed been like a labyrinth, a multicursal maze or less poetic term might be learning the hard way. The metaphor seems to fit the trip in so many many ways. While walking a labyrinth, you can only see what is dead on in your face, you can't see where it actually leads. It could lead to another dead end or be the route to the center. And getting to the center is the goal. Balance and harmony with the Big Questions, why am I here? who am I? where did I come from? where am I going? "Oh very young, what will you leave us this time? You're only dancing on this earth for a short time." Thing is, I have been aware of when I was closer to finding the tune to my own dance, then without intentionally meaning to I would make a choice in the labyrinth that took me farther and farther away from that center, yikes!!!
  Today I am feeling myself on point and finally coming back to the center, wiser for the rough journey and accepting of the answers I have learned along the way. Dawns on me as surely as this mornings' sunrise that I have been running from myself for many years now. Oh, I surely did not see it at the time. And how I get it now. Independent has been a word often used to describe me. I spent a lot of time jumping through other people's hoops and trying to meet their needs, accept them, love them, etc...with no boundaries. I learned what they wanted from me and dug deep to supply it. Problem with that philosophy is in being someone other than who you truly are, you can find your spirit becomes nearly suffocated. It isn't 'you' doing the loving at all. it is you acting out a role defined by another.
     Okay God, I think your hard-headed daughter is finally beginning to understand. One, I have been looking for love for a very long time and thinking I just wasn't good enough to receive it just as I am, just as YOU made me. Oh dear, and you and I know rather than embracing my self I have blamed you for making me so different that I can't fit in to the boxes. So, I kept trying to learn to fit in the boxes. You knew where all this would lead me all along. The ultimate choice, get out of the box and be who you are or die in the box from suffocation. You give us free will and must be sad or amused at how often we keep wriggling around in these boxes.
   So enough rambling around the point.  In this chaotic labyrinth and the quest to find true love, it leads me back to the essence of realizing it is from you and born in me. It is bigger than any earthly box. Here is my heart. However long or short my days may be on the earth, I promise you I will do my utmost to be true to the lessons you've taught me. I will do my best to honor you by not trying to be any less than you created me to be. I will dream with my eyes wide open. I will worship in joy and I will not let religion get in between you and I. I will fight against those things of darkness that would box me in such as fear, hate, guilt, labels.
      I will endeavor to see myself as you see me, my creator. I will endeavor to trust you to lead me through the rest of this labyrinth, as YOU know I have been greatly humbled by my own inability to find my way. Still I am amazed at your love and care for me along the journey. If I am a slow learner, then you are an amazingly patient teacher. I do not know what lies ahead, but in surveying what lies behind even a slow learner must remark at how many pits you've saved me from falling into. So, I will trust you. You have been here all along, knowing that makes all the difference.