“Sometimes the only available means of transportation is a leap of faith.”-Margaret Shepherd

I have never met this woman, but if I did, I would tell her that her words are brilliant in their simplicity and speak volumes about the daily events in my life and yours. For some, it takes that kind of faith to get out of bed in the morning and keep on keepin’ on. For me, faith is about knowing something is so, without benefit of actually having experienced it. Folks like that are the resilient thrivers and are such wonderful models for all who find life on life’s terms to be daunting. Recently, I was speaking with someone who has the same thought each morning…”Oh no, not again,” meaning that he was facing another day where things would be the same as they ever were. I reminded him that nothing need be the way it was if we did all we could to change the outcome, by altering the input. Habitual thoughts keep us in those stuck places that aren’t much fun. What if, at every point, we could do a literal, physical hokey pokey and turn ourselves around until we were facing the direction we wanted to head? What if our leaps landed us precisely where we wanted to be? I have learned that they are far more likely to do so, if we set a landing point.

Some of my leaps look like starting over again after being widowed at 40, going to seminary to become an interfaith minister, beginning relationships, ending relationships, quitting a stable, but draining job I had held for 11 years. Hard to imagine that at the end of this month, I will have crossed the threshold of the one year mark and I’m still going strong.

I have been in free fall often throughout my life, wondering if my parachute would open on time, or I would come crashing earthward. Although I have never and will likely never jump out of  a perfectly good airplane, I can imagine the time between heading out the door and being back on terra firma…a sense of terror mixed with exhilaration. It really is like that in life sometimes. I prefer to focus on the whheeeee~ aspects of emotional skydiving, enjoying the scenery along the way.