As September rolls in here in the mid-south, I am reminded of some wisdom I once heard:  "The best way to find God’s will is to get moving.  If you try to plant yourself where He doesn’t want you – He will move you.”  I am taking this wisdom to heart.  I find it easy to become so overwhelmed with choice that I become paralyzed.  The fact that many of us have so many choices in life can create a temporary paralyses on our part in that we don’t know which way to go so we just decide not to decide and we stay stuck in our mess.  We do this with the small things and the big things in our life from what diet to follow to what career field to enter.  At least, I know I can have this problem.  I have a lot of different interests and talents and I sometimes find it hard to choose or when I do make a choice I find brick walls everywhere I turn.  Does this mean to turn back or plow through?  All I know is that I cannot continue to sit still.  I have to make a move and trust that if I make the wrong one – God will let me know or better yet, move me.
 
I have experienced this with churches I have tried to become a part of and cities I have tried to make a home base.  In both cases, I never quite fit.  In one of the churches for instance, I could not find a community.  I searched high and low and was involved in multiple groups, teams and service opportunities.  I was putting out all of this effort to belong and I was getting nothing in return.  I eventually realized I didn’t belong there and I moved on to a different church where my effort was minimal and the return was substantial.  I found my church and community and I did little to make it happen.  The same can be said with a recent city I inhabited.  It was on the coast and absolutely beautiful.  Prices were cheaper so I could actually afford a place with some sort of water view and the weather was around 80 degrees most of the year.  Problem was I could not find a life sustaining career or a good group of friends.  I tried very hard and became involved in countless groups, Meetups and churches only to have an almost zero return on my investment.  Nothing seemed to work in this beautiful place – It just wasn’t meant to be.
 
These last couple of months in Memphis have had me thinking that I should take that advice I heard all those years ago and just start making a home and see what God does in return.  I have become involved in a church, some Meetup groups and am job hunting like crazy inside and outside of Memphis.  I have a budget worked out and I know what I can accept to move and what I have to reject no matter how cool the job may be.  I am not wasting time.  I am enjoying where I am regardless of how long I might be here.  Besides, if I get moved I will have had some enjoyable experiences to carry me to the next place I land and if I get planted then I already have a head start on finding and making a home base here in Memphis.

Sometimes life takes you way, way, way up in the air and just leaves you there, hanging.  After a while you can’t help but wonder if you are headed for a touchdown or a crash landing. 
 
While my financial situation hasn’t changed, my stress level has skyrocketed.  The company that I have been trying to run from is crumbling before my eyes.  There is good news though!  After feeling uneasy and unsafe for so long I had started to question if my past was causing issues in my present, but it would turn out that my gut, my discernment, my instinct – whatever you want to call it – it was telling me something is off and so are all these people.  I couldn’t understand it.  It was unfounded and I found it crazy that I felt safer in gang-ridden Los Angeles than in Jacksonville, FL, but as I now know those feelings weren’t so unfounded after all.  This is the good news.  It wasn’t me.  It was and is the company and people I call my day home.  While I cannot share any of it here at this time, it does feel good to know that I can and should trust my instincts. 
 
I have been questioning many of my past decisions that were made based on my gut instinct and while they look like they might have been wrong – current happenings say otherwise. Following your gut instinct can lead you into a deep valley, but that doesn’t mean you were lead astray.   In my case, I know that the valley I am in is a back-to-the-basics, re-grounding and re-focusing list of lessons that will make all the difference when the gate opens to the pasture in my future.
 
One of those lessons is the simple truth that I can ask Jesus for a hug whenever I feel overwhelmed and over stressed.  I learned this one evening while in shavasana after a hearty detox flow.  I saw myself as a little girl in a white dress balled up crying my eyes out.  Jesus came to me and picked me up and I watched myself disappear into His light.  I did catch a glimpse of myself in His arms and I was smiling from ear to ear and happy as a child could be. I then saw present day me get up off the yoga mat and walk into Jesus’ arms disappearing into His light.  While I was watching all of this I felt an overwhelming sense of peace, calm and tranquility.  I was immediately elevated somewhere above my current human status and experienced a calm I had never known before.  I guess what I felt was love and my tear stained face proved it.   And I have felt this same tranquility again and again as I have taken Jesus on His word when He told me at the end of that vision “Don’t forget I AM always here.”  I no longer deal with anxious or unwanted thoughts in bed and I no longer worry about what to do with myself when I am alone.  Some people have alcohol or weed or a host of other things, but I have Jesus and I find Him to be the most effective calming presence with zero negative side effects.
 
I am also finding out what is important to me and what deserves my focus and what does not.  I am sad to say that like many people who grew up like I did – I have quite a fascination with materialistic things and the finer quality things at that. Take it from one who always wants the most expensive of everything… It turns out that I look just as good if not better in what I can easily afford!  I do have to admit that my pride took a hit and I might have had to be forced into one of the stores after exhausting myself in 100-degree heat trying to replace a pair of everyday sandals that broke, but once I was in the store I had a hard time leaving.
 
And then there’s that whole living with intention and learning to make the best of every situation and becoming a living example of what I want to see more of instead of what I want to see less of…. Yes, I do agree… trusting your gut can lead you into a deep valley, but it does not mean you misunderstood or made a mistake.  It does mean that you went where you needed to go to learn what you needed to learn for when you get plucked out of the valley and into the pasture that is your future.  I mean what’s the purpose in getting everything you want if you have no idea what to do with it?  I am now realizing this could have happened to me and it would have been a complete disaster!    Oh and another something – I am finding that when I spend the day in Jesus’ arms – all those personality traits that I have been trying to get rid of somehow disappear and I didn’t do anything but ask Jesus to let me sit in His arms all day long.  They say Jesus is sufficient and after spending the last couple of weeks in His arms I can say with complete certainty that He really is more than enough.

Hello from sunny and very warm Florida!  Have you ever had the flu in 90-degree weather?  Isn’t it amazing that when you have those pesky chills that nothing can make you warm!  I even tried wearing a sweat suit while bundled up in three layers of blankets in 90 degree plus heat and it didn’t help me one bit!  Whatever flu I had, I kicked its butt with potent vitamins, plenty of water, detoxing yoga sequences and lots of sleep.  I give the sleep part to God because I honestly don’t know how I was able to stop the nose blowing and coughing so I could sleep like a baby through each night, but I did.  I can also tell that this sudden halt to my life is going to be continuing for a while as my respiratory system is very compromised so here’s to enjoying a slower pace, more yoga than weights and learning the art of what they call an active restful peace.
 
Life in the Bull Pin has been tough although I am finally adapting to my environment instead of constantly trying to escape it.  I started watching a show called Life or Debt and some wheels started turning in my head and I came up with a budget for my current existence.  I had to cut my groceries, toiletries and fun money in half and as a result I am getting rather creative with my food options to stay on budget.  I have been attempting to follow my new budget for the past few weeks and have done well so far.  My goal was to stop having to cut into savings each month especially since I cannot put anything into savings!  This budget is not a long-term fix since I cannot effectively pay off my debt and keep out of savings, but it will allow me to at least make ends meet while I am in the bull pin.  The simple truth is plainer than day:  I cannot stay where I am, but the door remains locked as to going any where else.  And so, I created a budget for the bull pin. 
 
I find that whenever I get sick, it gives me time to reflect on my life and this time around I realized that I have been running myself ragged trying to make Jacksonville work.  When I first arrived here, there were better paying jobs available, but I was burnt out and needing some rest.  Now that I am mentally back in the game, the good paying jobs have vanished.  They are just not here.  The Jacksonville economy is really weird anyway.  There seem to be three sets of jobs available here – an insane amount of minimum wage to high 20K, a few $30K’s and then a bunch of $50K-200K+ jobs that are manager/director level and out of my reach.  Jacksonville is a beautiful city boasting great weather, a river front, the intracoastal waterway and several area beaches, but the economy here is wack and it is probably responsible for the fact that this amazing city hasn’t grown like it should have considering all it has at its finger tips.  Anywho, I kind of got side tracked, but the point I was trying to make is that I have been making myself sick trying to make Jacksonville work.  I sit all day at a desk reconciling things on multiple computer screens, come home, work out, then get on the computer to job hunt and apply to jobs and nothing worthwhile ever seems to come back.  And I’ve literally been doing this for a year!  While I was sick this time around – it hit me that maybe I need to take a step back.  When I first came here, I was told that Jacksonville is preparation – so maybe I need to stop trying to hold on to something that apparently doesn’t want me to hold on to it. 
 
On a brighter note, I had an insane outburst at a festival I attended very recently, but it hit me later that day, that it was my first outburst in weeks!  I have turned a corner in the temper department and I guess I had to have an outburst to realize how long it had been since I had one!  LOL.  But in all seriousness, I am continuing to work on staying calm and being an example of love and grace to all I meet.  It is not easy, but new habits are taking the place of old ones and my outbursts are becoming less and less a part of my life.
 
And now, I feel I am learning the art of really letting go of the steering wheel of life.  I now realize that I have done everything I can to the point of extreme exhaustion to prevent what seems unpreventable – total financial collapse.  I just can’t worry about it anymore.  I just have to let go of the steering wheel.  My new prayer is that I would know when I am taking the wheel out of God’s hands because it is hard to decipher between taking the wheel back and just using plain common sense.  All I know is that I am no longer job-hunting like a crazy person.  On the weekends, as I have time, I will do a local hunt and a national site hunt and if the hammer drops before I land something then so be it.  I will take myself back to Tennessee where I have a house I can stay in rent-free.  Sometimes we have to stop trying to walk or keep up and allow ourselves to be carried.