Outside Wellness

These dry, cracked, and scarred hands seem to stare back with weary eyes. They are overworked from following my restless lead. I have kept them busy storing up for my future. They’ve been gathering and keeping, and it all keeps slipping through my fingers.

In their life of toil, these hands have hurt and they have healed—and they remember it all. They show a mother’s courage, a father’s resolve, and humanity’s ferocity. They are slowly, and yet too fast, growing into the skin which will forever contain them. I need to let them do what they’re created for before it’s too late. I need to let go.

All of your stories—past and future—are written in the body. Your hands are no exception. Your hands know the way of the work you must do—the way to bring your within out into the world. Do you not know that here, in these wise, weathered, and empty hands, is your gift?

If you stop trying to gather, all the words spoken infinite times before will take on new life in your hands. Are you open to receiving the guidance and direction and answers for all of your questions? If you are open, who are you listening to?

Are you turning your ear toward the clamor? Or your own knowing?

In this surreal time where we cannot consume as we’ve been so used to, we have an essential choice—to seek out more noise to try and fill the void, or put our ear to our depths and listen.

If change really does start from the inside out, this external shifting will not change us. Circumstances have changed, stress and anxiety and health has changed, but we are still the same going through them.

We will always be stirring if we don’t allow these times to stir us up. We may as well stay hidden inside, even when we can finally come out of our homes.

If I stay quiet even when I have something to say—even when I don’t know how to say it—what purpose does my voice have?

What kind of life will my heart live inside me if I never allow it to fill up to overflow, so that others may taste my purpose?

What good is purpose if it stays in winter’s sleep even when spring comes?

Our life is nothing without the heart, so why do we keep her beat from being heard? Maybe it’s because this clock beneath the ribs frightens us, reminding us that we are not forever. But this beating heart inside you will heal you, whether or not you let her. She will guide your true work through your hands if you just listen to her. Sense her, touch her, know her. Don’t be afraid. Feel her love and pain together as one flesh. One body—your body, who already knows with every cell how to be fully alive. You are a safe place for a beating heart.

I have great confidence in you. In your purpose. In your God-given ability. In your strength and resiliency. You can do what you’re setting out to do. You will do that which is written in your body.

Some days it will look different, morphing along the way—but this is normal and good because your dream is alive. It grows with you, eager to create more in you, especially during changing times.

Don’t fear these changes. Embrace them, because this right here is what you’ve been seeking in all your wandering, in all your restlessness. You are exactly where you need to be to move on the dream that has been moving in you. You have always been and will forever be the perfect human to make this into your Truth. What are your heart and hands craving today? Do just one action—one step, big or small, toward this.

Start here, where you are. Where you are today. No matter what was there yesterday or will be here tomorrow. What you are and have now is all you need for this journey.

To be there, you must be here. Those who cut corners will create a circle and end up right back here, where they were. This moment has something great to teach you. So do the next good thing, the next hard thing. Lean in to the outside change and let it change you as if you were really living for eternity. Create one good thing today as if it could make all the difference. A love note, a song, a dance, a warm drink, a kind word, banana bread—create something good today.

Your words have been sung before, but not in the way you can sing them. Your lips know how to speak this love and sound into life. Your heart knows how to keep a beat, and your hands know how to dance along.

-E