Saying YES.

What a journey this life has been and one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn was how to say YES.  Such a simple word and yet it’s not very practiced.  I watched myself with my 1 year old grandson today and how many times I was inclined to tell him NO, not to do something rather than encouraging all that he could.  It’s ingrained in us.  Put that together with a fiercely independent woman who can create a life quite nicely on her own, there is very little left to say yes to.  Until the moment in life happens when we are flattened (and I do believe each one of us experiences it at least once) where we have no option but to surrender and say Yes to all that comes our way.  Staying in resistance just makes it so much more challenging and though many of us put up a good fight, ultimately the surrender comes. I do believe it’s in that moment that life begins.

I’ve been on this journey of self awareness and conscious living from as far back as I can remember. Being conscious and aware, especially in the state of the world as it is today is not necessarily an easy ride and quite painful…oh the times, I wanted to stick my head in the sand and spend a day oblivious at the beach!  My life lessons seemed to come to a head after my surgery, I was prepared for the need to be dependent and the need to accept the love and support that was being thrown so generously my way. I was even prepared for the pain and the stillness but I wasn’t prepared for the surrender…the surrender that leads to the YES!

In all the clarity that I had about life and my self and relationships I finally surrendered to the knowing of nothing.  I realized through the healing journey that my life and this healing had a path of its own and the sooner I could get out of the way, the faster I could heal.  It’s really hard to stop knowing and doing and just Being but that was what was necessary.  I began to move through life effortlessly and without thought, no longer knowing why I was doing anything.  I found myself one morning on line chatting to a man who lived two time zones from me, breaking all the rules I had about what I wanted in my life. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a relationship at the time and if I did, I certainly didn’t want it to be someone who couldn’t journey beside me every day.  I stopped my natural questioning and started to say Yes. I put my insecurities and vulnerabilities on the table (my physical immobility, the hit my business had taken after being ill for a year, my instability in where I would be living and the unknown of what I was going to do with the rest of my life).  Just two years earlier, I would have thought it not wise to not have a good sense of your own direction before entering into a relationship.  Instead, I vulnerably put it all out there…”this is who I am and where I am now and I don’t expect any of to stay the same” and I found this beautiful soul half way across the country didn’t run.  He had answers to my dilemmas and he saw gifts in me that he was open to receiving.  Whatever I offered, he would just say YES and we began to look at how we were building a relationship…both two very strong, independent, self sufficient people at heart that could survive quite well alone but something was missing.  There was no one there to crack our heart open, to invite us to be vulnerable and it was only in the power of the WE that it is even possible.  Without losing the I, we both started to put everything we had, at the risk of losing everything and being really hurt, we put everything we had in to this magical WE and with every step, our hearts exploded, bursting wide open, leading the way.  So rather than waiting for the feeling of love to grow, we both acknowledged the beginnings of that beautiful energy and then acted our way to what it was we wanted and in one year, we have flown a total of 64 flights to be together, visited 6 different countries, gone from the Atlantic to the Pacific, explored Niagara Falls and the Rockies on more than one occasion, explored a part of the southern States new to both of us, great music, new foods, I even started to enjoy wine, all because of that one word that drives our life, YES.  If it is a desire for one, then how do we make it happen? It just has to be done. Doors have opened that have astounded both of us…when you get out of your own way and just start saying YES to all that your heart desires, it really is nothing but a path of ease.  Needless to say, that when David proposed on our most recent trip to Italy, I said, “Yes!” I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring now that we have decided to get serious about this thing called “WE”.

Posted in Connecting with others, Connecting with SELF

2 Responses to “Saying YES.”

  • Brigitte Roeder says:

    Hi Lindsay! I love your story! Congratulations to you both!

  • Colleen Dietrich Sisson says:

    Lindsay….what a wonderful post. I am so thrilled for you and David. Congratulations on your courage and willingness to take life moment by moment.


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