When your soul pull is deeply inconvenient
Our desires aren't always heaven sent at the perfect time, aligned with our current life, requiring little change or diversion from our current flow to step into.
No - the truth is, our desires can be everything but straightforward:
- Our desires can be messy, and bring up a lot of fear and discomfort.
- Our desires can be inconvenient - asking for change just when we thought we could take a breath
- Our desires can be disruptive, asking us to walk away from decisions we thought we already settled (and wanted).
And when I say desires - I don’t mean these off the cuff things that are attractive in the moment, but the things that light that inner spark and feel good to have done, on a soul-level. (This is an important point of clarification and if it doesn’t make sense to you, drop me a note and we will build that understanding.)
In my latter years of college I thought I was making headway - in school and personally. While I was working both the ever consuming hours of architecture school and interning, I ended up engaged to my college boyfriend and shortly thereafter moving into a home he bought so we could renovate and build a future there together. It was what I thought I had wanted - I had been an equal participant in all the conversations, and had desired that level of commitment. Somehow, in the midst of all it happening, I had a small but growing nagging feeling that this didn't look like my life. It was a good life, a life to be grateful for- but not my life. Instead of fully owning my feelings, I ended up so engrossed in my studies that I didn't take time to do what this newsletter is all about - tune inwards and listen, explore, and get to know me a little better and where I really want to go.
By the time I graduated the noise was getting louder and in my pair of brand new internships that summer, the sound of the truth became deafening - that there was more out there I needed to learn about myself and become, and it wasn't where I had just planted myself. So I started the painful process of unraveling myself from the tangle I had found myself in.
The fallout? It was MESSY - it wasn't only the relationship and new home caught in the cross-fires - there were implications for my family when it came time for me to walk away from it all. It was also heartbreaking - I had to say goodbye not just to a life, a relationship, and a beloved pet, but also to a sense of security I had in my future.
When it was all settled and I ended up back in my mom's loft sharing a room with my little brother I was wrung out, lonely, and worried. But if I’m being honest? I was also deeply relieved. I felt like opportunity and possibility was available to me again, even if I had to wade through some muck first (and it was definitely muddy for the year after).
However, despite the difficulty in climbing that particularly steep mountain, all these years later I thank God and that version of myself for having the kind of courage to follow-through when it would have been so much easier to stay and make it all fit.
While this particular lesson was big and painful, there is a common truth there that shows up whenever it’s time for me to acknowledge my desires and go to where I'm called, even when the changes are micro in comparison to what felt like that life-altering bomb I had given myself as a graduation gift. And that is, we can't stay where we are and expect to grow.
We can't always keep everything we've always had - relationships, material things, comfort - when we are calling in something new. Creating space for what we want sometimes means… creating actual room. This looks like rearranging, letting go, relocating, and shifting how we see things, and, most importantly, ourselves.
Reflection Question
- If what you really wanted couldn’t be inconvenient, selfish, or untimely, what would you really want?
- For what you are actively building and calling into your life is there room for it to come in? Does something need to be rearranged, let go, or shifted in order to open space?
