Perspective is what makes the difference.

Maybe that’s a good metaphor for how I could feel about life’s unfolding dramas. Depending upon how I perceive events I can either freeze in the cold and wet of my life’s most recent storm of problems, or I can step back into the eye of the storm, dry and protected, where trust lives. Trust can change how I perceive the storms that swirl through my life.

If I know, not just believe, but know, deep in my heart, that “everything is always working out for me,” as Abraham-Hicks says, it changes everything. Whatever is occurring in my life is not happening to me, but is happening for me.

And trust goes even deeper. Trust is knowing that Spirit has my back. Trust is owning that whatever is happening in my life, guidance and support are there for the asking. When I trust, Spirit holds a strong roof over my head and warms me with the fires of love. I am held within the arms of angels, as I stand protected in the eye of the hurricane.

What this means is that we don’t have to be blown around by the storms in our lives.

Unfortunately fear often sucks us into the drama with a tornado of emotion. Fear tells us we have to fix the problem, or make it go away somehow. Fear causes us to struggle against it and be so fully focused upon the problem that we inadvertently keep creating more of it.

It might look like this. You’re having a lousy day at work. You started out that morning tired, having slept poorly. Your emotional weather forecast - grey skies with a chance of drizzle. Now, you’re feeling insecure and you’re doubting the decisions you’re making at work. Emotional rain is drizzling down your neck, cold and wet. Your co-workers are enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting, and you’re feeling left out. The cold, drizzle becomes a constant rain of negativity on your unprotected head. You’re feeling too tired and grumpy to make the effort to join in with your co-workers, and you tell yourself there’s too much work to do anyway. The rain becomes a downpour. Almost without your volition your mind is increasingly filled with negative thoughts, about what you are doing, about what others are doing. Finally, like a cartoon character with her own personal thunderstorm pouring and crashing about her head, you leave work for the day. You get into the car and your stomach is in a knot. Your mind is looping over and over the day and what you and everybody else did wrong. Your perfect storm has descended.

But what if you didn’t have to go there?

What if you could be more of an observer of what is happening, like a weather-watcher of your own life? What if you knew you were safe and protected within the arms of Spirit? Could you experience a grey and drizzly emotional day from a protected space inside rather than standing out in the wet and cold? What would that look like?

It might look like this. You start out the morning tired, having slept poorly. As you get out of bed, your emotional weather forecast is grey skies with a chance of drizzle.  Making yourself a warming cup of tea, you ask Spirit for a little extra support and energy today.

At work, feelings of insecurity well up, you don’t know why. So you ask your Higher Self, “I wonder what’s going on?”* You return your attention to work and let go of worrying about those ‘not good enough’ feelings, mentally turning them over to your Higher Self. With your attention focused on work, an image memory seeps into your awareness of yourself as a young child believing she wasn’t good enough. You respond to the image by imagining your adult self holding your inner child, loving her, with the angel of your Higher Self standing behind you enfolding you both in her wings. In a few moments, everyone feels better. 😊

Later in the day, your co-workers are enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting. You’re working nearby. You feel a cold drizzle of negativity seep into your mind, as you feel left out of their community. Again, you stop and ask, “I wonder what’s going on?”* In doing so, you step out of the rain and back into the warmth of Spirit’s protection. Giving it over to Spirit, you return to your job and once again remember yourself as a young child. This time she’s feeling abandoned and alone. You visualize yourself holding her lovingly and telling her you will always take care of her. Again, you see both of you enfolded within the wings of your Higher Self. You feel comforted, loved, and able to refocus upon the work you were doing, grateful for the support from Spirit.

The end of the day arrives and you’re tired, but you feel balanced and calm. You’re glad to be going home to a warm dinner and look forward to a relaxing evening. You offer a prayer of gratitude for the support and guidance received as you turn your car and your thoughts toward home.

I'd rather have a day like that. Wouldn't you?

I'll admit that was me in those examples. Though I didn't get to the guidance part until I finally remembered to ask. And really, it was just a little storm in the overall scheme of things given all that is going on in the world. Still, the metaphor holds true. The more that we can let go of the struggle, step into the role of observer, and back into the arms of Spirit by asking for support and guidance, the more gracefully we can weather all the storms. Support from Spirit can be the roof over our heads and the fire that warms us. It can be our safe place from which to observe the storms swirling around without getting caught up in the drama. Who knows, with practice we might even come to enjoy the stormy days as well as the sunny!

* This wording is a specific technique for accessing guidance from your Higher Self taught by Maureen J. St. Germain in her wonderful book, Waking Up in 5D: A Practical Guide to Mulitdimensional Transformation.  ​

Where do we look for the exit from this spinning hamster wheel of survival fear? There must be a way we can we make 2021 different, more positive than 2020.
 
As individuals we may not be able to do much about the world events swirling about our lives, but we can look to our inner environment. That’s where we can create a 2021 that feels and lives on a different, more positive level than we may have in 2020. We can hop off this hamster wheel, open the door to the cage and step out into the fresh air, one appreciative moment at a time.
 
The other day I was enjoying our backyard. It is bordered by trees, standing like sentinels at the edge of a grassy field. The tallest are the black locust, their bare black-brown branches reaching high into the sky. In front of them stand the junipers, dusty green and full. As I gazed at the treetops high above, branches outlined against the sky, I saw two squirrels chase each other up the trunk of a black locust, all the way out onto the twiggy ends of the uppermost branches that just barely supported their weight. Then they leapt into the air, one after another. The grey forms seemed to hang suspended in midair, their agile bodies curved like commas in a sentence, heads, tails, and paws reaching for the juniper branches below. Then the juniper caught them like a loving parent, in branches that bent and swayed beneath the aerialists, breaking their fall. The squirrel chase continued on down into the thick foliage of the juniper and I saw no more of them.
 
The image of that leap stayed with me. Later that day, this quote from Abraham-Hicks showed up in my email inbox. I had to laugh. The message was clear.

“By thinking and speaking more of how you really want your life to be, you allow what you are currently living to be the jumping-off place for so much more. But if you speak predominantly of what-is, then you still jump off —but you jump off into more of the same.”
-Abraham-Hicks

2020 was our jumping off place, the twiggy ends just barely supporting us as we leapt off into 2021. The question is what are we jumping off into? Will it be more of the same?
 
As I type, a fire crackles in the woodstove beside where I sit, embraced by our once white, leather barrel chair. The chair is marked and speckled with years of laughing, spinning grandchildren and territorial felines. Golden flames dance above the dark shadow of wood in the hearth and the fire warms me as I turn to look out the wood-framed bay window of our living room. A wintry mix of rain, snow and sleet is decorating the branches of the crabapple which shelters the front of our home. Frozen droplets of rain hang like twinkle lights strung along every branch. Tiny, burgundy red crabapples dangle below, each one encased in ice. A slate sky hangs above, contributing an increasing supply of much-needed moisture to branch, berry and ground. The usual community of birds who frequent the crabapple are nowhere to be seen. No doubt they are hunkered down within the sheltering branches of the junipers.
 
It feels good to hunker down myself, safe, warm and dry, and consider this transition time in which we now find ourselves.
 
The biggest lesson for me from this passing year is that of letting go of how I think things should be and appreciating what is. Throughout the year, unexpected and unwelcome events kept piling up and it became clear that I couldn’t anticipate what the next month or even the next week would look like. I had to let go of my ideas of what was, and allow what is and what could be. Most of all, I had to learn to take pleasure in the positive parts of my life that I might have taken for granted, but do no longer.
 
I learned at a whole new level, how to enjoy the little things, spread over the branches of my life, like berries from a tree, waiting for me to savor and appreciate. A warm fire, a good roof over my head, the beauty of nature just outside the window, the antics of my grandchildren as posted on Facebook with riotous subtitles by their Dad, the love and health of family and friends, my own health, learning how to use Zoom, my small yellow-lab, dancing and twirling on the end of her leash, hip-checking the neighbor’s huge, young golden, plenty of toilet paper, paper towels, and food to eat. And did I mention toilet paper? I have a whole new appreciation for that humble roll of white. Everyday life, so easy to take for granted just because it is always there.
 
Until it’s not.
 
We are lucky here in the Midwest. The shortages of supplies have been short-lived. The pandemic has been survivable for most. The political situation hasn’t affected our everyday lives too, too much. Yet, as each thing threatened from the outer world, the little everyday things we depend on became that much more precious.
 
I look out the window once again and a single robin, harbinger of hope, alights in the crabapple and helps herself to the frozen crabapple banquet spread before her. 2021 stands before us, a banquet of tiny, delicious moments awaiting us. May we be as the robin, hope-filled, braving the storm, and appreciative of each moment of happiness and enjoyment spread before us in 2021. May we be as the squirrels, leaping off into a new year that supports and holds us in loving embrace.
 
Happy New Year to you, dear friends.