Catch Up To Yourself

Where are you really?

Hi, and welcome. I record my own voiceovers. It gives you my voice expressing the words I write. The audio version is free this week. Simply tap the play button at the top of the post.

xo - Jeannie Lynn

The sun finally came out in Nashville on Friday. Along the string of Monday through Thursday, I kept letting the rainy, grey weather lull me into a melancholy state. I was in and out of the lull all week. Teaching my yoga classes was the main thing that lifted me out. I didn’t feel like teaching. I also didn’t feel like sitting at home feeling bad that I wasn’t teaching.

It was a week when I showed up even when I didn’t feel like it. It was a week when my own, previously scheduled commitments caught me like a safety net when I couldn’t muster up my own strength.

How were those commitments there for me? No really, how did they get there? Right there, in those color coded little blocks on my Google calendar. I look at all of them at least 20 times a day. They show me how I previously determined I would spend my time.

Lately, whenever I’ve tried to look ahead to the future, it’s blank. It’s full of question marks. For the time being, I ceased all efforts of making plans. I wish I could say I got present after relinquishing the future, but no, I jumped in the other direction. I looked back. It was a good time for it. This week in particular, I noticed how much better I felt after teaching my yoga classes. I thanked my past self for catching me here, during a week when I felt unmotivated and without a clear vision for the future.

The path I’ve chosen will continue because it is good for me, even when I am not good. There was a day when I interrupted my melancholy muttering and said aloud: “It’s a good thing I’m scheduled to teach today!”

Of course there comes a time for a sick day or a mental health day. This was not one of those times for me. I knew my mind was on the hamster wheel, and I needed to go do something for somebody else for a while. I was grateful to have a way to do that.

I spent years wanting to have something to give. For a long time, I couldn’t understand yet that I had been performing and hoping people would feel helped. I performed until I started to feel like a sad clown, and then I drank to forget it. I drank until I was exposed. I was exposed until I could begin to heal. I began to heal until I could see myself… until I could see God… until I could see others.

My renewed sight revealed my honest interests, such as yoga and writing.

I didn’t necessarily plan to help others with these interests. Yet because they are honest, they naturally expand. They fulfill me, so I continue. Since I am already full, I overflow.

The overflow is how the interest becomes something that touches others. It bubbles over.

Photo by Muneer ahmed ok on Unsplash

I recently found myself with an empty cup. I didn’t feel bad about it. I accepted it. For once, I didn’t give in to guilt or shame. I have put forth honest effort and energy, so I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. On the contrary, it felt like I completed some great mission, and I was willingly collapsing.

I imagined myself in a scene from Lord of the Rings.

Two characters of the story, Frodo and Sam, lay on a huge boulder, jutting out from a high slope of a volcano. Lava rushes out of the mountain and down beneath them around the boulder. They just completed the mission that brought them there, laid out on the cliffs of Mount Doom. For all they know, this is the end. They collapse and surrender to their fate.

Soon after, through the clouds, appears a flock of eagles we’ve seen before in the story. They drop down and scoop up Frodo and Sam to bring them home.

I felt like Frodo and Sam. I have accomplished a great mission. It’s been a long journey. If I were to highlight some milestones: healing from addiction, forgiving myself, forgiving others, harmonizing relationships, starting and continuing my blog, getting certified to teach yoga, and now, completing my first year of teaching. These were all things that once seemed impossible to me. Yet here I am. I followed the impossible until it was the only way through.

Anyone has the power to do this, and I understand why not everyone does.

It takes all the energy one has to give.

So, as I collapsed and envisioned the scene, I prayed in the way of surrender to what’s next.

“God, I have nothing else to give. You’re going to have send the eagles if there is more to the journey.”

Since then, since that prayer, letting go of all strenuous effort has allowed my heart to catch up to all the legwork I’ve done. I relaxed and stopped trying so hard. I came back to enjoyment.

I started to realize that, for the first time ever, I was my eagle.

If I didn’t ever start listening to my heart, I would have continued to pour out my energy into a life I didn’t love. The collapse from that would have been the same as the others. I would look to some other substance, job, or person to save me.

I see now the collapse (rest) always comes, no matter which way we take.

For me, the collapse this time was different because I didn’t resent the things I poured my energy into. Not only did I not resent them, I loved it all. Yet, I still felt so tired. I didn’t know how I could be motivated to continue. And that’s just it. I didn’t have to muster up or fabricate motivation. I could still go on, even when I didn’t have motivation or any energy to fake it. How?

I could still go on because it is work I believe in.

Maybe that is the success of the mission I just completed.

It was to find myself, my higher Self, God. By facing and shedding every layer, I found the way, all the way to the center.

And now?

I want to move from that center.

I caught up to myself.

Here I am.

Where to now, God?

I don’t really want to keep talking about myself in a blog every week. That was most of the motive behind making this an advice, or “insight” column, to which readers submit questions, and I answer in the posts. Maybe that was just a copout? “Hey, how about you guys give me ideas, so I don’t have to think of them?” I didn’t really mean for it to be that way, but I guess it’s one way to look at it.

Check it out, I’ve been writing on this platform for a year and a half now, and I still don’t know what I’m doing.

Just like with yoga. I continue to write because I believe in it. My heart is in it. Reader, I don’t know who you are or where you are, but somehow, I believe I can feel your heart when I write here. Do I sound crazy? Okay, then I guess I’m crazy. I feel it. I believe it. I wrote a poem about this connection we have in a 2023 post:

My Heart is Your Heart

Do you have a belief that nobody could ever shake out of you? A knowing? Maybe you can identify it. Or if not, maybe you’re still working your way through the layers to find it. Keep going. After a while, you just can’t help it. The magnetic pull just gets stronger. I used to be able to wiggle my way out of it because I still had enough layers blocking the force. I could pick and choose other directions to face, thinking I knew where I was going, even though I was going in circles.

Now, it’s the opposite. I can’t see a damn thing. I don’t know where I’m going. I care less about that now. I am not walking around on layers covering me up. I am at the center underneath the layers. They are falling away because I’m not holding them in place anymore.

I’ve caught up to myself. I am here fully. All of me is here, now.

Out of habit, I wonder what the next mission is.

We’ll see where the eagle brings me.

For now, I am enjoying the the soft breeze of sabbath. In June, I will complete my seventh year living in Nashville. Hm- “And on the seventh day…”

I feel the soft breeze on my face while I allow myself to be carried to the next beginning.

I lose sight of what is the end and what is the beginning. I can finally enjoy the infinite loop.

No matter where I am, I am right here.

I think I’m caught up now.

Linked song lyrics:

Morning, I woke up with the view of the moon
To untangle my shoulders, a sleepy balloon
I'm celebrating, making it through
Just making it through

And when I grow up, I wanna be like a tree
And change with the seasons, helping people breathe
But all I've achieved lately is making it through
Just making it through

I froze on the spot where you left me
To hold everything still worth protecting
I know now, at the end of the ending
That just making it through is the lesson
Just making it through

I didn't know then
That out of ash and destruction
The ground will grow things
I was trying so hard to stay still
Terrified that I'd kill something

I froze like the whole world was ending
Exposed, holding my own panic, pretending
And I know now that we needed the ending
You were never gonna stay
Just making it through is okay

Time is supposed to run out, time is supposed to
Sun is supposed to go down, sun is supposed to
Like your mood, like your power, like your battery
Rise, fall, rise, life, death, life again
Sky, ground, sky, day, night, day again
Rise, fall, rise, life, death, life again
Sky, ground, sky, light, dark, light again

Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light, again, light, dark, light, again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again