What an environment we are living in! A historical moment we will eventually look back with disbelief?

I’ll cut directly to what I want to share with you today, but first I want to mention that I’m grateful we are connecting, even as you read this message from my heart. I am super grateful! Never has connection and togetherness been prioritized in my life, as it has now.

During this pandemic, my beloved Aunt passed away. Not of CV19, but due to it being ‘her time’. She lived a long life and for 48 years, was a part of mine. More than likely you can resonate with this: when you physically lose someone, there are days it still seems like that person couldn’t possibly be gone. I have those days, yet it has also stirred a new opportunity for growth within. Allow me to share...

You’ll read this next sentence and probably think I’m wonky, but I thought it was incredibly cool that my Aunt chose her nieces to be her pallbearers—and this included me.

On a Summer afternoon, one month ago, I stood with my hands under my Aunt’s casket. I felt myself carrying her physical weight and I also felt myself carrying the weight of sorrow, as well as the honor of this moment that I wanted to hold on to. These emotions swept over me as I wept uncontrollably.

Days later, I traveled home. With the current events being front and center in all our lives, I was reminded of the weight that we all are enduring right now. For many, this also comes with heaviness and strain that affects us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

My Aunt had written her last words for my Mum (her sis) to read out loud to those present at her ceremony, and it included words such as: enjoy your life, celebrate, don’t mourn over me….

Create movement forward….?

Here’s the nugget I hope you’ll digest with me today:

When we carry a weight—as I did physically and emotionally that day—the carrying is intended to be a transfer. It’s a shifting of what was, to what is. It’s not meant to endure forever.

This analogy is deep, but it spoke to me greatly: As I walked, a pallbearer with her under my arms, I had to carry that weight forward, by taking steps in a new direction—I had to create movement. It was a sorrowful and difficult movement, as my heart and mind recognized why I felt this weight.

I think it’s incredibly important that I share that I ‘recognized the weight’.

For some of you reading this, you may feel the weight of the current world’s environment or you may feel a different type of weight due to whatever circumstances you are uniquely enduring. For some, we may be walking around with a weight (a heaviness) and not recognize (be aware) of what it symbolizes.

During these last months, I’ve been doing a lot of different work, and I’ve talked to all sorts of people from different countries around the world, including a man suffering from the weight of drug addiction with a deep desire to rid the weight of this chain in his life. In our conversation, he reminded me of the phrase, “If it won’t change, I have to change."

That phrase can help us all ‘transfer the weight’ of whatever we are suffering from. Call me Pollyanna, I don’t mind, but life is fragile and rare and good and goes quickly—and I choose to step into the creation and creativity of constant transition and change.

For the drug-addicted, this may mean taking a step forward to recognize the weight and see a Psychologist or get therapy. For the weighted pandemic-influenced, whose focus is solely on the day-to-day numbers, news, and how it’s impacted the freedom of routine, this may mean turning off the press conferences more often than not, getting creative with time, being refreshed in nature and changing outlook. For those that lost a loved one, it may mean focusing on the impact their life had and carrying on the legacy (vs the weight of sorrow). For the angry and frustrated, it may mean practicing forgiveness (because you recognize it is you that has been carrying the weight, not the one who did the wrong).

For us all, in order for life to change around us, it does indeed mean, ‘we must change within us’. We must create the movement forward in order to enjoy our lives, in the now.

There is a really wonderful and applicable Bible verse that a new friend shared in a group recently: Hebrews 10:24, 25. In the AMPC version, it reads like this, “Let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watch over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) love, helpful deeds, and noble activities.”

We need one another’s encouragement, love, compassion, and empathy in ‘such a time as this.’

May you and I be attentive, aware and recognize, not only what weight we are carrying with us, but also what others are enduring—so that we can stimulate (encourage, inspire, support, spark…) love, helpful acts and gracious action to those, like you and I, in need.

Together, is much better—do you agree?!

I hope that you will take time to recognize and transfer whatever weight you are carrying.

Be you and thrive my friend! 

Feel free to share this with someone you love! Have thoughts you’d like to share with me? Simply reply to this email.

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