I listened to a re-run about conflict and how it creates who you are, IF you face it and let it change you.
Donald Miller and Ed Bacon were having a discussion about how your life would look if they made a documentary about it?
When you were faced with a personal dilemma, did it change you and help you grow, or did you walk away from being uncomfortable and not wanting to face your fears?
I found this very interesting and from a different perspective than last time I heard them talking...this time I could see how the Universe actually sets up conflicts in your way, for you to chose. It is your decision on how you respond that defines you, not the amount of conflicts in your life.
From my own experience, I am very grateful that I had a huge life conflict, one with many parts that needed me to respond...and all the struggles with fear and pain all created who I am today.
I thought as I drove along the route today, I can't even imagine me unchanged. That how incredibly lucky I was to have the opportunity to have been delivered a huge life changing moment. To find out my father was a pedophile, allowed many structures that supported who I was, to fall. When it all fell, I was able to then begin building up my life.
My life story shows me facing conflicts....not avoiding them.
The devastating truth actually was a brilliant gift that would change me and my life completely. Had this not happened, I would never have gotten to know me.
I would have been in a life, but not one that was reflective of my soul...I would have lived a life, but remained unchanged.
We are taught to work very hard to Not have changes in our lives, when changes are actually growth spurts, creative moments that enhance who we are.
What I mostly got out of today's listening is that without conflict, we would stay the same. And that fighting to stay the same, is actually stunting your growth.
Next time conflict comes knocking, when drama is delivered, when life takes a turn that is asking it seems too much of me, I will know that it is for me to expand as a person.
The more conflict and life transitions we sucessfully navigate, the more our life will become a very interesting and unique documentary.
We document our life by how we live. When we die, what will they see? A person who was unaffected by life or one who was transformed by life?
It broke me out of the trance of following. What kind of a documentary would it be to watch a woman follow along compliantly? To be just one of the sheep...and not a black sheep that decided to do something different...to change directions and go her own way.
It is hard to even recollect the trance I lived as...now that I am wide awake and seeing, feeling and moving freely.
What really sticks with me, is the strength it takes to put a child under the trance, to steal their free movement and make them follow.
Abuse adds another twist, not only are you in a trance, but you are also living in a home with abusers...being abused, but not able to move.
What I also know, is that it will take efforts of herculean strength to gain back your movement, to get out of the cyclone affect of our mind's trance. What appears to work is to literally go against the flow of what you have become comfortable with, to do things unlike you.
To say no, instead of yes. To stay home instead of going, to speak up instead of remaining silent; to do the opposite.
I didn't know I was stuck until the machinery that kept my father's truth hidden, broke. I was set free when all I believed upon became a lie.
Free from the trance of lies and pretend...a 'reality' in your mind only.
My mind broke...and I fell out of the trance. I didn't know a free Beth, but I was willing to go and find out. It took awhile to find her stride, to become used to her new ways; to even become used to being a single, instead of being one of a group.
Ed Bacon suggested, that our life's mission on earth is to face our conflicts, that they are served to us so we have something to push upon to form who we were meant to be.
I know that as odd as it seems, I was meant to live the exact life I did for 46 years and then to completely transform myself. To change and be in the same reality, but no longer a victim but a person who was shaped by abuse.
