We don't like to be uncomfortable. We like our routines and the easiness of showing up to a life that is predictable...at least somewhat predictable. Oh what comfort sleeping in our own bed, a cup of coffee or tea, an uninterrupted drive to work, a successful trip to the grocery store, a warm blanket, dinner with friends, the love of a four-legged one. Life is sweet when it flows without obstacles like the blacktop road over rolling hills on a clear crisp fall day.

As easy as it is to lean into these days...it is as difficult not to shrink back from the fiery ones. Sometimes we choose to step into the fire, we seek it out, we desire the challenge, we want to push ourself to the limit. Other times the fire finds us. That's what happened to me when I was diagnosed with cancer. The fire came right up to my door, didn't bother knocking, and blew right in. No warning really (all the doctors said it would be nothing). No easing into it...I was just immediately and fully engulfed in the flame of cancer. Routines and ease...out the window...nothing was to be the same from that moment forward.

Looking back from here almost twenty years later I wonder how I did what I did. Where did I find the courage? How did I not crack and split and get consumed by this red, blue, yellow inferno? How was I able to bring myself to each day with hope and not be totally overwhelmed with despair?

Looking back from here I also can see that I chose not to shrink back from cancer. I chose to live it...as hard as it was some days to live with my body... the ravages of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy...my personal slash, burn and poison experience. I stood in the fire...I cried, I slept, I prayed, I let myself be helped, I hid my emotions and then let them out, I stood in my strength, I looked forward, I made plans (not all were fulfilled) and I opened a place in my heart for Spirit to find me.

It is in the fire that we are cleansed. It is from the fire that we are molded into a new form, one not previously imagined...perhaps one we had not been willing to claim. In fire...and in the fiery days...there is the possibility of transformation. Are you willing to be there and not shrink from it?

With tenderness,

Paula