Have you ever been in a position where you didn’t know what action to take for something you were facing? Or have you ever encountered a dilemma where there were multiple paths you could go down but didn’t know which of them to follow? Sometimes, the best decision in those situations is to take an action that many overlook as even an action at all and that’s to be still.
Being still requires patience and that’s a trait too many of us seem to lack. It’s one I’ve been trying to learn a lot more about over the past few years. But enduring the high pain levels I’ve been going through daily for several years now has often led my brain to taking headstrong actions. And unfortunately, for each of those ego-based actions I took, there were re-actions that brought on a new level of stress. So deciding to take some medication to numb the pain usually sent me down the path that caused even more pain to occur and prevented the source of it from ever healing. There were times too that those headstrong actions led me to trying new healing modalities that did nothing for me but detour me for months and months and drained me financially. Thankfully, those experiences led me to the place where I found the action of being still to be a much better one to follow. It’s one where I wait patiently now for clear direction to come from my spirit and from God.
Recently, my sister’s family went through one of these experiences where they didn’t remain still and wait patiently for things to happen as they were meant to. Her husband had gotten a new job out of state that was going to require their family to move again. There were several more months left in the school year for their sons and their first reaction was to remain where they were until the end of the school year, sell their house, and then move. But certain conditions came up that brought about some fears within them. This led to actions that were swiftly taken to move them out of state before either the school year ended and before their house had sold. For the next four months that followed, their family lived in quite a bit of chaos and ironically, when all the dust had settled, their original house had sold just after their kids school year would have ended. The point here is that if they had just been still and waited patiently as they originally had intended, there’s a good chance their stress levels would have been drastically less during that period of time.
The example with my sister’s family is one I often reflect on when I think about trying to do something abruptly to curb my level of pain these days. And truthfully, the last thing I want to do is complicate my healing process anymore than it’s already been over the past few years. Too often in my life I’ve jumped head first into doing things without being still and suffered the consequences in doing so. So being still has become a much healthier action for me to take. It’s one where I simply just wait patiently for the answers to come. And even when they do, I still continue to be still until my spirit says the time is right to take any actions that came from those answers. Don’t get me wrong, being still is extremely challenging, especially for someone like me who is a go-getter and a Type A personality. But I am finding my life isn’t filled with an abundance of poor decisions anymore that did nothing but lead me down many dead-end paths.
So the next time you are facing your own dilemma and don’t know what to do…you might want to take a moment, breathe, and realize that being still really is one of the actions you could take to deal with this situation. Instead of making an irrational decision from your ego that could do nothing but bring you regret, try this path of patience and I’m sure you may find yourself experiencing a lot less stress.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
This is the theme of my sculpture that I showed to you.