Do It Afraid

I’ve been paralyzed lately – unable to write, unable to look back to process and deal with painful experiences.  My fears have overtaken me enough that I’m not doing the things I want to do and even love to do.  It seems I’m frozen in this place because I’ve chosen to accept a cheap, plastic view of my life in a lame attempt to keep from failing or changing for the better.

Over the past several months I’ve learned how to rise early in the morning for mediation and quiet time (and good coffee, of course).  And the last few weeks I’ve allowed trivial changes in my routine to keep me from getting up – choosing to believe that I can’t do it and that I should not do it.  So I’ve slept in – missing that important time alone for reflection.  “I don’t reflect well, so why try,” I think.  

I’m notorious for walking away from the past and shutting the door hard.  While in some degree that is good so that I’m not missing the present and allowing the past to skew my world view, I’m also not allowing it to help me learn the lessons of today.  I walk away to not deal with the pain and hurt, but also not allowing myself to accept the good memories in the middle of the pain.  

I’m a runner – or at least I fancy myself to be one. Yet lately, I’ve allow even the most minor negative mindset to keep me from running.  “It’s too humid, too late, I’m too cranky.”  It’s summertime and pretty early in the morning – I’m sure that is how it is going to be just about every day.  Yet how can I call myself a runner when I barely run two days a week?

And then this writing gig – I know that I am called to write.  I can sit down and write something at the drop of a hat.  I suppose that it is not always good writing, but I can do it – something that others struggle with.  Yet I’m avoiding it – not really believing that what I have to say will impact anyone.  Watching others in my writing class making great strides on their blogs, writing books, and getting the recognition they have been wanting for many years.  I look at their work and I think, “That could never be me.  Why try.”  So I refuse to write – or if I do – I don’t publish it.  I can’t stand the painful thought of publishing something that no one reads.  

Clearly I’m hiding from something or someone or denying myself some experience that I must have.  So today, I’m deciding to do something different – I’m deciding that I need to do it afraid.  

The sun has risen on this day and I know that I will suit up in my running gear and take that route that frightens me a little bit because you never know what you are going to encounter when you are running. 

I’m going to push the publish button on this post and hope for the best and ignore the statistics knowing that this is what I need to do, what I’m called to do – regardless of the response.

I’m going to look through and organize old pictures – searching faces and experiences for knowledge and reflection and memories of other times and pray that I learn why those things have made me the person I am today.  Even if painful, even if it means that I face the fact that life has shaped me into this tattered soul and that I must acknowledge that children are growing and moving away from me ever so quickly.  

I will do it trembling, shaking, tear stained, afraid.  Because if I continue to hide, I’m not really living, but merely surviving.  And surviving is a shell of a life and not the life I want to have.  

What can you choose to do afraid today?