Week 12: Change-Maker

 

“In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call the ‘physics of the quest’, a force in nature governed by the laws of gravity. The rules of quest physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting and set out on a truth seeking journey either internally or externally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some of the most difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

The most "me" I ever am is in the quiet moments nobody sees -- not because I don't let them, but just because they're never really looking. And that's okay with me. My best work is done in secret, in the goodness of silent words and the powerful quiet comfort of a prayer. 

I am not the songs I sing on my Instagram. I am not the things men have done to my body. I am not the words I write for other people to read. I am at my best and truest self in moments of purest connection with God.

I contain galaxies contained in universes. I am a future goddess in a stained t-shirt, sitting on a carpeted bedroom floor with more capacity to love in my soul than anyone could possibly fathom. It is the way of things to seem so much simpler at first glance. But there are oceans of me. There are fires. There are gardens.

There is a light in me, and I see it. And it doesn't matter who else does or does not.

This is maybe, possibly, my most meaningful way that I can change; to rebel against the notion that I must always be supremely unsatisfied with myself; that I must produce in order to be loved or valuable; that what I do is in any way more important than who I truly am inside.

The most crucial act of treason you can perform is refusing to believe what anyone else, including you, tells you about yourself.