{PERSONAL JOURNEY DAY 6} When the Divine saved my life.
There was a time when I definitely felt the Divine cross over the "Veil" that so many speak of to save my life.
I was going a photoshoot with friends, novice photographers looking to build their practice by growing their portfolio.
"Fantastic!" I told them. I'd happily pose for them as a model in exchange for photos I could use from my own growing yoga business.
We went to UCSD, because we wanted to find somewhere that combined the aesthetic I love — grit and grace.
We found a stairwell in the art department, graffitied up and down the walls, perfect for the images they were looking to capture.
After they set up their lighting, I posed on the floor below them. Then, because I wanted to look "sexy" (and since I didn't feel it from within but wanted the knee-high boots I was wearing and the tight booty shorts I had on to do the trick), I climbed up onto the thin wooden railing of the stairs.
We were more than five flights up and each step was made of pure concrete. There was an abyss to the cement floor far down below. Metallic railing held up the thin wooden beam.
I reclined, ready for a shot I thought would look fantastic and suddenly, I felt myself slipping to the left — directly into the empty opening where I knew if I hit bottom, I would be dead.
I could hear my friend screaming, sounding far off. I could her her husband's footsteps immediately running down, and down, and down to come to where he thought I was about to land.
And in all of this commotion, I felt the swift invisible hand of a giant pick me up and lift me over the railing of the next floor to allow me to land as softly as possible on the next level below me.
I rolled down a few stairs, knocked my knees into oblivion, but by the time my friend's husband reached me, I immediately bounced right back up.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I told them.
"WHAT!" my friend had caught up, still seemingly screaming. "Ohmigod, let's clean up, let's get out of here."
She seemed more frightened than I was. Shaking. Visibly. Her husband was examining me.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, yeah!" I said, shrugging it off.
"I thought I was watching you DIE!" my friend continued to screech.
I convinced them to take more photos. I wanted to act like everything was okay. I didn't want to be the center of all this care.
15 minutes later, we packed up, and I tried to hide my limp as we made it back to my car. I drove back to my apartment, where they had parked, and they reluctantly got into their car to go home.
The instant I walked into my apartment, I collapsed in tears. I called my friend, shaking. I could not believe what happened, but I KNEW that I should have died and yet, I felt a force save me.
I am convinced the Divine saved my foolish ass that day.
While on the surface, you can't see much of my injuries from that experience, I do believe I suffered nerve damage in my knee, as I can't feel anything when you press down on the spot where I landed.
A physical reminder of the tiny injury I walked away with, because the Divine loves me that much.
**
My feelings of abundance today stem from this incredible book I got from the library yesterday — going to the library has been one of my favorite things to do since I was little. I brought my younger siblings there, and now I do the same with my daughter.
As I was perusing the aisles, my husband reading our daughter a children's book in a nook with a Clifford doll, I asked quietly and inwardly, "Show me which book I'm meant to read."
Then, I found this: Birthing God: Women's Experiences of the Divine by Lana Dalberg. I'm only two chapters in and it's amazing...
I've been wanting to step into a more powerful arc of the Divine, where I can sense that there's this energy of women dynamically rising up, and it's beyond women simply learning about self-care. There's something profound that's happening and I can see we're on the cusp. So, I'd like to be helping to spearhead this movement and I keep asking... "How? How? How?"
Every morning I wake up, I ask the Divine, "Please use me as a vessel for the Greatest Good, including my own."
Abundance comes today by clearing out my house (I hate clutter) and selling things on NextDoor. Meeting cool neighbors. Bringing our hammock swing out to the front yard on this gorgeous day, so that Wilder and I could have a beautiful picnic with each other.
Abundance comes from my husband making sales in his new gig today, too! Including as he works to sell Summer, our camper van.
Abundance comes in dance parties and gratitude lists, and the power of clarity that unfolds in meditation, like how I've always been the one to give words to difficult feelings people have.
How I'm quietly being asked to return to what is my greatest gift, but that which I have walked away from, because I thought it wasn't "enough"...
And, in knowledge, like in Gary Zukov's Seat of the Soul (with forwards by Oprah & Maya Angelou in this 25th anniversary edition), which I'm listening to now, as well, since I heard it mentioned twice in "random" happenstance and I thought I'd just get to the conclusion the Universe wants to send me to, much quicker, since I knew a third time would be comin' right around the corner.
