A Pattern Revealed

In every chapter of my life, I learned to survive.

I could never keep my head down, so I learned to surrender.

Surrender, to me, was never caving or adapting. Surrender was walking away.

As a young girl, I had no choice but to stay, not for the lack of trying. I can still remember my mother dragging me home the first time I ran. She swept the kitchen floor with me.

As I look back now, I see every time I ran.

It wasn’t in haste.

It was in conviction.

Eventually I realized it was my soul’s way of surviving. Her way of living life on her terms and not the way the world expected.

This last run stands out more than all the others.

Probably because it brought me to the biggest landing pad of my life.

The one where I am doing it alone.

The one where there is no familiar hand to reach for when the darkness arrives.

And in the dark night, it is painful.

When the shadow clears, it is liberating.

The transits of this past week brought me face to face with myself. I stayed with the feelings, but I could feel another plan forming.

Another run.

Another marathon.

Another reinvention.

A path that would clear away so much of what feels load-bearing in my life.

And for a moment, I considered it.

The easy way out.

The familiar way out.

The way that has followed me since I was a teenager.

The same pattern that almost moved me to California.

The pattern that had me choose myself over my marriage.

That had me walk away from the career I went to school for.

That had me leave the home I built with my children, the home they still drive by for the memories.

I ran.

I ran.

And I ran.

Until I reached the ocean on the East Coast.

If you asked me whether I was running, the answer would be yes, some of the time.

But most of the time, I was answering a yearning.

A yearning to be free.

A yearning to find the truth I came into this world carrying.

A yearning to find a place where my soul could finally breathe.

Yesterday, I could hear the whispers again.

The shadows reminding me there is always another exit door.

But this time, I see the pattern.

I see the doorway.

And I see the opportunity.

The opportunity to stay.

To trust.

To release a survival strategy that has carried me for decades.

Because there is an edge I am standing on now.

An edge that could change my entire life.

If I take flight.

If I trust.

I have trusted God my entire existence.

But now I find myself asking a different question.

How do I trust me?

How do I trust the soul that has carried me this far?

Do you know what it feels like to trust your soul?

Not your fear.

Not your conditioning.

Not the voices that tell you to run.

But the deeper knowing beneath all of it.

Because I am beginning to wonder if the greatest leap of faith is not trusting God.

It’s trusting the piece of God that lives within you.

With Love and Grace

Patrice

oX

Founder of Odyssey Lighthouse