Fully Alive

Sometimes I'm drawn to a person because I can see all the beauty and gold and creativity and passion and brilliance hiding just under the surface of the responsible adult mask or the wounded heart shroud or the squashed and stifled cloak or the mantle of fear.  I see the glory of God and I know it wouldn't take much to uncover all that goodness so the world could experience the uniqueness of that glory through that individual.

And sometimes I land in the path of a person that is so brilliantly alive that I just sit and marvel at the beauty and vulnerability and passion and light and love and gold that is radiating out of them so freely.  That happens far less often than I think it should.  Too many of us live in the above paragraph.  

But today, I was dropped into the path of a brilliantly alive person.  She was warm and passionate and engaged and self aware and honest and vulnerable and real and beautiful and inspiring.  We were strangers at 8:00 am and soul sisters by 9:30.  How does that happen? I texted her later, thanking her for doing the hard work of becoming so fully alive.  

And there is the key.  We are born fully alive and from there we gradually learn how to shut down to simply survive. At some point, some people get tired of simply surviving. . . it's not living.  Then the work begins by shedding all that has been taken on to uncover all the beauty and gold and creativity and uniqueness within. It is scary to become all that we were created to become.  It is risky.  You will lose friends.  You will be labeled and people around you will have to shift as you shift.  They usually don't like that.  

BUT IT IS WORTH IT!!!  It is so worth it when you are the person sitting across the table from someone who is longing to be alive and tired of simply surviving and YOU are the inspiring one.  It is so worth it when YOU are the one feeling and exploring and discovering and creating and becoming and adding so much goodness and love and light to the world that everyone wants to be near you somehow.  And if we all decided to just do the work and become fully alive, the world would be a little more wonderful.  :)