When the way is clear but the path is difficult, keep going.
image credit: Bartley Terrill
The picture above is me hiking back up a clear path from a waterfall in North Carolina. We had found a roadside waterfall that was marked in our tour book and thought it would be a quick hike for a big reward, the waterfall. When we got there, the path was marked and it was clear we were in the right place. You could hear the waterfall but not see it. The path looked short enough but it went down steeply. We decided to do it. It was not easy. It was muddy and steep and a little scary at times. At the bottom, was a beautiful waterfall that I enjoyed very much. Then I had to climb back up that path and it was even harder going back up, but I did it.
Going down
This image of a difficult path came to me today. It is a Sunday afternoon and I am already exhausted thinking about the week ahead. I’m still exhausted from the week before. I’m on my path, and I know it is the path I am supposed to be on, but it is not easy.
This summer, I felt nudged to look for a full time teaching job. I applied for three and the third one offered me a job. I prayed about it, I talked with friends and family and mentors about it, and I felt really strongly that this was the path I was supposed to take. I had been a stay at home mom for eight years and had been working part time the last three of those eight years. I was always home, I always attended school parties and meetings, I always picked my kids up from school and always was able to be home if they were sick and needed me. All of that was about to change and I wasn’t sure it was going to work out.
I have a character defect that if I feel led to a path and I decide to take it, I want it to be easy. I want to be rewarded for taking the right path. I want the universe to keep reminding me that I’m doing the right thing by making my path and my journey clear and smooth. Never in the history of me following my path has anything EVER worked out this way, but dang it, I want it to. And I am disappointed and confused and frustrated every time the path is difficult. I don’t know where I ever learned this type of thinking, that everything was supposed to be right when you do right, but I am always wrong.
Here is an example. I decided years ago to disrupt the pattern in my life of living with someone in active addiction. I wanted the path before me to be lit up like the yellow brick road, filled with gifts and smooth travel. I was doing a good and noble thing, I was about to change my life for the better, I was changing my daughter’s life for the better too-bonus points! Wrong. While I did not have to live with an active addict on a daily basis I now had the challenge of salvaging my house from a bankruptcy, figuring out how to put gas in my car to get to my three part time jobs and my full time student teaching, figuring out who would watch my child while I had to do all of that work and homework, etc. I had to challenge every belief I had that caused me to marry, live with and have a child with someone in active addiction in the first place. I had to make time for my Al-Anon meetings and time for therapists. It actually would have been easier to stay and live how I had been living, not safer but easier.
Another example, I decided to get my master’s degree the year that I was getting married to my husband Bartley. We planned a destination wedding for about 30 people, moved myself and my six year old to a new school, a new city and a new house. The next year we decided that we wanted to add onto our family. What could be a more beautiful path?? I cried so much on that path that it was more like a river than a path. We found out that we were having two babies instead of one, I was teaching full time but so sick and exhausted from the pregnancy that it was hard to function. My graduate classes were in the write your thesis stage and my pregnancy brain was not allowing me to do my normal brilliant thinking. My ex-husband died suddenly in January that year and I had to navigate supporting my child through losing her father, finishing a master’s thesis, preparing my classroom for a long-term sub, gestational diabetes, and being unable to sleep or function normally because of the size of my pregnant body. I made it through. I got my master’s degree, navigated the grief journey of myself and my child, birthed twins, and managed to stay married, on my recovery journey, and sane (relatively speaking). I spent so many days and nights crying at the sheer height of the obstacles in front of me on my path, not understanding how on earth it would be possible for me to continue on the path. It was not easy, it was not simple, and yes-it was the path I was supposed to take-it was my life journey for the time.
Once again I am in the middle of a path that seems impossible. I am teaching full time in a new school district. My oldest child went off to college and one month into the semester, our dog got hit by a car and died. I was devastated. He was just a puppy and he was my little shadow. My classroom was challenging because I had started late, and that is always a challenge for everybody. It takes longer to bond as a class and I had less time to get my mind, classroom, and goals together than if I had known all along what grade and school I would be at. I felt behind in every way from learning how to send an email to not knowing how to make copies (I needed a number and didn’t yet have a number), to knowing all of the acronyms used in school notes and at meetings.
I found out that my teaching license (that I hadn’t needed the last 8 years) was going to expire in June and I had to take two college classes to get enough credits to renew it in time. So now I am taking two online graduate level courses and my new teacher brain is not allowing me to be my normally smart thinking self. I got a 65% on my last assignment I turned in. Ugh. We are doing home improvement projects that are taking time and energy and decision making and it has not been easy. We are navigating having a child in college, two eight year olds that are in sports and very active with friends and activities, job travel and stress for my husband, and deciding how to break old patterns in our life that we have decided don’t serve us anymore. I cry and sleep more than I would like to admit. I feel overwhelmed from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep everyday. I want to quit. I want to quit this stupid path that I know is mine and is right, but it is hard. Why? Because I don’t trust myself and I don’t trust God.
That is what it all boils down to. I think that because it is hard, maybe it is a mistake. I think that the right path should be easy and that if it isn’t easy, it must not be right. I forget about all of the HARD journeys I have been on that were so right for me and yet so difficult that I didn’t think I would make it through. I don’t trust that I’ll have the strength, the energy, the determination, and the faith to get through it. That means I think that it all rests in me and I forget that in my life, I’m supposed to be believing that a Higher Power has my back. That She will guide me and give me what I need to get through anything when I need it. I struggle with life and I struggle with faith. I doubt my strength and ability and I doubt God’s too. I actually get lost in the path and forget what I’m on it for, what is the destination? The path I’m on right now is moving toward financial independence and security, professional fulfillment, and on contributing my gifts to society by impacting children’s lives at the youngest school ages. My path is toward healing and growing and breaking old patterns. My path is toward becoming more authentically me and less trauma impacted and trauma reactive and doing what is easy not what is right and true.
So I’m going to cry, take some Advil, drink another cup of coffee and write another crappy assignment for my classes. I’m going to half-ass house work, do the bare minimum laundry to get through the week and ignore my desire to take a nap. I’m going to ask someone else to grocery shop for me, skip exercises, and probably shop for a dog online while I should be preparing for my week ahead at work. I’m doing the best I can. It is hard. My path is steeper, muddier, and longer than I thought it would be when it started. I forget that I’m walking toward the life I want and that when I get there, the view will be awesome. I’ll forget the mud and the scrapes along the way (for the most part) and it will be worth it…right?