Conscious Living with Grit and Grace

I was thinking about my roles as wife and mother this morning.  When a wife and mother looks at those she is nurturing in the home, my experience is that we care so much about those of our family, think so much on their situations, we wonder how we can best fulfill our roles with them.

As I went through my divorce, and long before this, I was thinking so much about what it takes to live our life and what the choices we make mean in the greater scheme of our lives.

What I mean is that, it wasn’t until my 40s that I was able to look at my life from an entirely neutral position.

To look, back through my 30s, my 20s, my teens, even childhood, and see how each choice, built upon other choices.  How each action, lead to other actions.  This might sound simplistic.  But it is so much different to theoretically know the story, than it is to live the story.

In these moments, just before major decisions I made, I didn’t know that these particular times would be major shift points that significantly effected the course and flow of my life.  This isn’t applying emotion to these choices – just observation.

Noticing the Flow of Your Life

It really wowed me, when I looked back and really, impartially and with clarity, saw my choices.

It wowed me looking back from my 40s, because I knew what the other choices were that I was considering, and how the branches of these parts of the tree of my life were pruned, and others were watered and tended.

And there were surprises, so many surprises, after choosing a particular branch of the tree, and cleaving off others.  What happened, what occurred, even now, is not predictable.  It can seem as if outcomes are not assured, and then, as my inner guidance is always telling me, in the larger picture, we’re still okay, from a higher perspective, we are always okay.

This is not always comforting in the moment, though, the sometimes very uncomfortable present moment.

What am I saying here?  Lol.

Once we receive this awareness about our lives, we can move to making conscious choices.  But, we are also still living with the way we have created our life to date.

Living with Unconscious Choices Through Grit

The story fairy tale of marriage that we as young girls receive, the excitement purely about just having sex, are the two primary messages about one of the most important aspects of our lives – choosing life or marriage partners – that I perceive still and that I did perceive back in my teens.

The true commitment to life, the true grit in our natures, are revealed after we make these choices.  After we make choices that create whole new branches in our tree, and that create new saplings that we must tend ourselves until they are strong enough to grow on their own.  Our true grit is revealed living our choices to the best of our abilities.  Our character and our nature is revealed in just doing the best we can, sometimes in very, very difficult circumstances.

Moving Through Conscious Choices Through Grace

Even when we get a bit wiser, and then we are consciously making these choices where we know we are crafting a branch of a tree, and cleaving off other routes and branches, this can feel disconcerting – am I making the right choice?  This is where I am at in my life, and when anxiety hits these questions arise, and then I remind myself of my connection to inner wisdom, inner self, inner guidance, self love.  And I carry on.

In the midst of living our choices, we can forget to tend to ourselves. I feel that through all of what happens in our lives, it is the one aspect especially that wives and mothers do not tend to, from what I have seen and personally experienced.

Yet, taking care of ourselves should be our first priority.  In an airplane, what do they tell us?  To put the oxygen mask on ourselves first, and then assist others.  We need that inner oxygen flow, that inner conscious connection to Life within, to support us in living our choices to our fullest capability.

Let me tell you this.  I know your life is challenging.  How do I know your life is challenging?  You are human.  It comes with the territory.  And, you are doing an incredible job – I suggest you let yourself know that from time to time.

Grace also comes with being human, if we choose to receive it; if we allow it to enter our lives, while we are, with grit, making the best of our choices to the best of our ability.

Remember to care for yourself and allow nurturing of yourself as you tend your branches and saplings.  As you do so with the grit and grace that comes with just being; with just being you.

Maybe this is simply, what life is about, in all of it’s difficulty and in all of it’s beauty.