I took a walk today, headphones on, podcast playing. As I turned a corner I came face to face with an interesting natural phenomenon… This is what I saw:
Beautiful pink flowers growing straight out of a pruned stub of a branch, sometimes referred to by landscapers as a “wound”. I immediately whipped out my phone to capture it.
As I continued my walk I heard six words reverberate through my brain… “God is doing a new thing”. Now, I know that not everyone reading this considers themselves a religious person. I think, even so, that the idea that beautiful things can come forth from a place of woundedness is something we can all embrace.
Our family recently moved back to our “hometown” after 18 months of being away. I have been immersing myself in my tribe again and rediscovering San Diego. I realized, as I left the severed tree behind this morning, that I had compartmentalized our 18 months away. Our family went through some difficult sh*t while we were gone. Flooded home, discouraging attempts to find community, health scares. I was lonely, often discouraged. Returning “home” has been so refreshing and so wonderful that I pushed our time away to the far regions of my heart and mind and simply lived as if they never happened. I hadn’t taken the time to find the value of that season.
As a Life Coach, one of my goals with my clients is to guide them toward finding a redemptive purpose in their pain. There are many assessments and even coaches that focus on a client’s talents, gifts, past successes but I believe they are missing an opportunity for personal growth.
As I look back at our 18 months away from “home” and take time to be mindful and reflect, I can find the places where my woundedness shaped me and took me a step closer toward being whole and mature. Our 6 weeks of hotel living while our home was remediated and repaired opened my eyes to how we really didn’t need the space and the things that we had spent time accumulating. Our life became smaller and simpler and it was wonderful. It is one reason we made our decision to downsize and come back home. My loneliness pushed me into a space of self-reflection and gave me the gift of time, time to dig deep into my spirit and get a strong sense of what kind of story I wanted to tell with my life. And a combination of it all compelled me to get my Life Coach certification.
So, in the spirit of my nature moment this morning and doing a “new thing”, I’ve decided to offer two months of Life Coaching (40 minute sessions/once a week & unlimited email support; cost of assessments not included but not to exceed $40) to a lucky reader. This is how you enter (one entry for each completed activity):
- “Comment” on this post
- “Like” my Facebook page (Shape My Story Facebook/)
- “Share” this post on Facebook by clicking the icon at the bottom of this page
- “Tweet” this post on Twitter
Once you’re done, shoot an email to Melissa@ShapeMyStory.com and tell me about your Life Coaching goal!
I will be drawing a random winner from the entries on July 6th.
Let’s do something new together!