This Hero's Journey

Today is Easter Sunday and I can't help thinking about the Hero's Journey at this time of year.  Today is the day when the hero emerges from his or her dark night of the soul and steps into the light of new life filled with wisdom and bearing gifts of great meaning for the entire world.  Gifts of hope, wisdom, greater understanding, compassion, etc.  It makes me think about my own journey and the process I have undertaken.

The road to self improvement is a long and arduous road.  We must be willing to explore areas of our life which are difficult to look at.  It requires honesty, courage and a willingness to continue even when it seems that the existence of a happier side of the journey is a fairytale someone told you just to see if they could get you to take on this crazy process.   It requires dedication and faith.  I am not on the other side of this process, I am right in the middle of it and sometimes I'm not very happy about where I find myself.  I want to be further along, I want to be stronger, healthier, happier, more stable and not always looking at some inner issue that gets in the way of me being the person I want to be.

Part of what I am realizing is that this larger, overarching journey that I am undertaking, the journey towards a happier, healthier, more successful Christi, is not one journey with a road that seems to stretch endlessly in front of me in a dark and frightening landscape.  It's made up of countless little journeys that each have their particular difficulties and are trying in some way or another, but also have their particular victories and heal a piece of my heart a little at a time.  Many little journeys are the ingredients of this larger journey which is ultimately called life.  If we take them one at a time it's much more manageable to move forward on our life path in a way that gets us closer to being the person we want to be.  Will I ever run out of things to work on?  I doubt it.  I'm sure I will always see room for improvement, my journey will continue on until the end of my days.  There is no time limit on our ability to grow as long as we have the capacity to do so.

I often feel as I go through this process and face my own dark nights of the soul that I am a wounded creature, more hurt than whole, who has little to give and needs so very much.  I think sometimes that's true, at various times in our lives we are all that way, but that is not the sum total of me.  I am so much more than that, we all are, and to limit ourselves to our weakest qualities is to do ourselves a grave injustice.  There are times when I rail against this process, this journey, that I know is so important.  I feel resentful at all the work I seem to have to do and wish I was further along, but I know that the work makes me stronger, better, wiser, more compassionate and better able to help others when they find themselves in a similar place.  I am forged by this process, not defeated.

If all that we are is our weakest qualities then we wouldn't have hero myths where the hero returns victorious.  We are meant to return victorious aware of all we have to offer the world and ourselves.  I don't have to wait to find the end of the road before I find that I do have gifts to give, we all do, and I get more every time I take another journey within and come out into the light.  Am I a wounded creature?  Undoubtedly, but I am also many other things and a visit with my friends yesterday reminded me of that again.  I am so much more than my wounds and my scars.  I am also light, joy, wisdom, compassion, a helping hand, a loving heart, a loyal friend, a dedicated mother, a musician, a statistician, a leader and a human being in process just like everybody else.   I can choose to stay in my cave and focus on the darkness never embracing the new life that awaits or I can come out into the light and celebrate all that I am, all that I have learned and all that I still have to learn.  This Easter, I choose the light.