Usually for me it is the cutting edge...well that is how it feels...not so arrogant to believe that I am really beginning anything new, just that I am used to feeling somewhat on the edge...
But lately, I have been existing on the growing edge...that place where I have to do things differently...and I feel lost and scared and quite unsure of myself. I suppose I could walk away but I won’t. I can’t. I know I belong here, for now.
This is where I change my life. This is where I take age old patterns of conduct and turn them into something new in my life. It is a place of great pain but also great change and that leads to a vacancy of suffering which is always welcome in my book.
Life is such an odd thing...we have been given this life with an indefinite amount of life to enjoy. Some of us get great quantities and others pitifully little. All of us just get this one. Many of us just do not know what to do with the life we have so we numb out, close off and refuse to really live. Living is such a scary proposition that we live but really we spend most of our lives fearing death which is really not living at all.
I am guilty of that. Fear ruling my life, making me live in smaller ways...ways that control me and hurt me. Cause me to act out in addictive patterns because I am so afraid of living, I just do the thing that feels good in the moment. Consequences be damned. I pick the thing that is going to kill me because in the very beginning it was fun, it felt good and it relieved that ever tightening spring in my gut.
Today I stand on this growing edge and I find myself wondering why I didn’t spent more time here. I feel more confident of doing something different...because I actually want something different. I see the trauma bonds and reactions that have led me to the edge again. I see why I am here but this time I see, at least I think I do, where to go from here.
It is hard to break cycles. It is hard to break free from any pattern of conduct, even if it is painful. How many people in the world, eat something daily that might eventually kill them, cause them to feel like shit about themselves, or take some financial risk that likely will spell financial ruin in the not so distant future but they do it anyway. Over and over again because in the moment, all they want is to feel better. And that desire, kicks off an endless cycle of misery for them, and everyone around them.
The growing edge can be something that lives inside me and pushes me toward an endless cycle of existence that never is really fulfilling. Or it can be that place inside me where I come up against myself, see myself in the truest form and become willing to grow towards the person that I want to be rather than reinforcing who I have always been.
The growing edge can be a place that I creep towards, allowing that restless edginess to cause me to act out in maladaptive ways or it can be the place where I come up against myself and finally grow beyond the limits of my former self. It is up to me...an endless cycle of agitation that keeps me perpetually stuck to where I am and do not want to be or a final shove towards a place where I can move more deeply towards who God wants me to be...the choice at the growing edge, is always, completely up to me.
