March 27, 2020 — On this date, I published my first post on Life Happens. Never anticipating the variety of experiences leading me to share my private life online, nervous excitement and hesitancy became companions.
March 26, 2021 — A year passes. Through emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual voyages resulting in deep contemplation, tears, smiles, laughter, and utter joy, I still sail. My family continues to support, care for, and watch over my choices and decisions. I am grateful for the choicest friendships, ones that I regard as soul to soul, rare and cherished companionships. They uplift, teach, counsel, encourage and provide invaluable perspectives, prominently occupying influential spheres within my heart. Their wisdom, love, and humility blesses me as I continually seek spiritual guidance. I have faith in God and can testify of His goodness, the sparks of life, light, and truth I receive from Him and those He has permitted me to encounter.
Lately, I have experienced a couple of nightmares (very unusual for me) and the total opposite emotional connection to joy-filled moments waking in peace and comfort. I remember the nightmare but not the dreams that overcome the frightening darkness with the light I know. I earnestly seek nourishment for my hungering soul, heart, my informed centre guided by innate, infinite knowledge where balance, harmony, unity, and love layer my mantle of self-awareness. Searching with a sincere heart, praying, meditating, listening, and hearkening, I receive manifestations of the gifts of wisdom, guidance, and understanding reaching my essence.
I hope my writing gives you pause for reflection, perhaps in the mirror to your soul and priceless treasure. Please forgive my weakness in conveying the spiritual yearnings within my heart in an introspective, romantic manner. The following poem is my feeble attempt to honour my heart and faith in eternal divinity as the source of guidance and truth. While I ponder, meditate, read, study, and pray, I feel balanced harmony. Always a test of integrity, I struggle with self-restraint and unwavering steadiness as I see my potential in the light of universal dust. I keep striving, through thoughts, words, and deeds, to be my true self. I am discovering myself inside the me people think they see and know.
Priceless treasure within a sacred womb,
inherently divine, an embryo.
Truth, light, knowledge seeded deep, soil’s heirloom,
infinitely precious, the I to know.
Stardust creation sowed in holiness,
seeks enlightenment in rhythmic silence,
sanctuary of humble acceptance
wherein resides harmony of presence.
Searching spiritual realms beyond desires,
kneeling into another dimension,
serenity brings focus and inspires
the seeker of wisdom’s perception.
Mysteries of Godliness, thirst-quenching
roots of heaven’s goodness, sprout in the heart.
Life of self-knowledge from dewdrops’ touching
flows like waves, gifted by sea’s patriarch.
Wisdom, integrity, and purity,
bred within the shelled mantle of sea life.
A pearl, the heart’s gem of serene beauty,
buried beneath a world of toil and strife.
Digging through multiple layers of grime,
the treasure hunter unearths a mirror
reflecting intrinsic self, oh, sublime.
Solemnity answers me, I forever.
Discoveries take time, patient perseverance, missteps, stubbornness, and in my personal experience, divine intervention, forgiveness, and glimpses of truth through spiritually enhanced eyesight. Difficult the voyage, but oh so rewarding!
Looking back over the last year, I stand amazed, fall to my knees with weakness, and bow my head with reverential unworthiness for all the blessings afforded me. I know how God feels towards me, my value to Him. I feel His nearness through correction, protection, direction, and gifts of soul-fulfilling friendships while gratefully acknowledging and receiving all He desires me to discover within myself, without labels and worldly acclaims.
I am not the same person I was last year or even yesterday, nor should I be. Each day, like fertile soil receiving a good seed, an embryo of dawning wakefulness, I seek the essence of stardust creations within the I to know. Developing, like a pearl, under divine guidance, I discover myself covered in nacre.
A priceless treasure comprises many facets. As I sail on the waters of my life, I encounter and confront vast obstacles and wondrous vistas. Absorbing what nature offers, contemplating the touch of eternal truths, and discovering iridescent, mirrored reflections, my heart expands in ways unimaginable to me.
Photo taken by Vicki Nicholls in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.
