Wishcasting Wednesday: Which Path Do You Wish to Follow?

It was difficult to write today.

For the past few days I have been standing still, not moving, stuck.  I kept watching people move forward so I pretended to do the same.  The laugh is still there, the quick-witted replies that always make people chuckle are still there, and the time to encourage someone groping along in confusion was still there.  But I wasn’t really there.

I have been standing alone and confused in the middle of a road that I had thought was leading to something since that morning I woke up with the thought that maybe it wasn’t leading to anything.   

So I stood still. I’m still standing still. My feet and legs (and maybe my body up to my neck) are mired in thick, brown goo that unfortunately isn’t chocolate.  And even if it were chocolate, I just don’t seem to have the energy to want to eat it all up so I can get unstuck and move.

And I look down the long road that stretches ahead of me and I am instantly tired, like a runner who has been running for a full year non-stop.  My eyes scan the horizon for an end to this mucky road and I see none. 

There’s a part of me, the Frightened One, that tells me to get off this road.  It is rocky, she says, and sometimes the sharp stones cut through your feet and make them bleed.  But I think of those times when the stones turn into soft, cool grass drizzled in dew that is like a sweet balm to my wounds. And I tell the Frightened One that I am staying on this road.

The Frightened One warns me that there will be more times ahead where I will get stuck and I will stand there confused and alone and maybe even angry at myself for stepping right into the trap.  But I tell the Frightened One that when I am stuck, I see what lies along the road, things that I would never be able to appreciate if I were moving at a jaunty clip  – that bush with the blue flowers, the nest in that tree to my right where three baby birds have just hatched.  It is also when I am stuck and alone that I start talking to myself and the questions I ask and the answers I get are far more useful than those that come when I am moving forward swiftly.   I tell the Frightened One I am staying on this road.

She tries again (oh how fearful she can be!) and she tells me that the road is long and it winds steeply upward in places and then suddenly dips low – so low that it will feel like I have been buried alive.  I ask her if, after dipping low, it rises again.  She says: “Oh yes. Certainly.”  So I tell her I am staying on this road.

I wish to follow the path I chose long ago when I didn’t even know I was choosing.  It is long and sometimes difficult and there will be times, like now, when I will get stuck.  But there will also be times when there will be flowers strewn at my feet, when sweet rain falls gently on me to cool my fevered brow, when I will walk with someone who knows the words to the song I am singing, when daylight and brightness seem to go on forever, when I will laugh loudly and clap my hands in wonder at something I will find along the way, when I will move forward quickly and not be afraid.  I do not know where it will lead me or when the walking will end but I know it is a road worth travelling, it is a road that has a happy ending.  I know that because I chose it.