It’s my last day as a resident in Massachusetts. Hopefully in less than 12 hours I’ll be getting on the highway with my closest friend driving my Penske rental truck and me following closely behind in my Camry Hybrid. While I can definitely say I’m feeling a sense of relief that this day has finally arrived, there’s also a strong part of me feeling a lot of fear as well. That’s only because I have no idea what my future holds in the city I’m moving to and truthfully, I believe I’m taking a complete spiritual leap of faith heading there.
Life is really all about choices and sometimes I just wish God would make some of them for me. But more than not, God has presented me with options throughout it where choosing any one of them has often been very difficult. My move today is actually one of them. As I head to my new home in Toledo, OH to live with my partner of now two years, I have more questions for God than any answers I’ve been receiving.
I promised myself twenty-four months ago when I met my partner online that I would take the relationship with him slower than ever before. As we grew closer together month after month, merging our lives together slowly but surely, I was constantly avoiding having the conversation with him about living together.
Frankly, I’ve been quite comfortable remaining in Massachusetts for the past six and a half years because it’s where I began my real recovery from an addiction-prone life. It’s also where my closest friend of almost seventeen years has lived, where I’ve had free state health care and government assistance given my unemployment status, where I’ve found holistic practitioners who have continued to help me on my spiritual path to heal my mind, body, and soul, and where I’ve made connections to many people who I know have truly cared about me. But unfortunately, Massachusetts is not the area where my partner lives or where his place of employment is situated. I always knew that if our relationship lasted, I might have to go outside my comfort zone and move once again in my life.
Up until now, I’ve moved quite a bit and have lived in the following cities over the years in this order: Poughkeepsie NY, Rochester NY, Fairfax VA, Falls Church VA, Rockland MA, Falls Church VA (again), Chincoteague VA, Berlin MA, Brockton MA, South Weymouth MA, and East Weymouth MA. Moving again and again to each of these places became exhausting. I attempted to make geographical cures with so many of those moves. That is why I promised myself this time around that I’d take things much slower with my current partner. The last thing I wanted to do is make another quick one of those again as those geographical cures never worked. Also, I kept telling God that I wouldn’t move until my physical pain levels dropped significantly. Somewhere along the lines though, a voice kept getting louder inside telling me it was time to move on.
Then came the day where I discovered my partner had cheated on me during a self-sabotage attempt, as he believed I was never going to move there at all. Since that occurred, I also noticed my pain levels weren’t lowering either, which started causing me great doubt and resistance to moving again. That was until one of my spiritual teachers told me something rather profound.
“What if things aren’t going to get better in your life, including your relationship or your pain levels, until you take a leap of faith and move in with your partner?”
I was completely dumbfounded when I thought about the statement, except I felt on some level there might be great truth to it. There have been many times in my life where I’ve had to take a leap of faith not knowing what was on the other side. When I did, God always caught me, so why should this be any different? That’s when I gave my landlord a two-month notice back at the end of November last year. Doing that much was easy though, because a part of me believed that maybe now God would start lowering my pain levels. Well as of the time of me writing this, it hasn’t happened yet and I’m a little scared.
So I honestly don’t know what’s in store for me in Toledo, OH, but I do trust that God has a wonderful plan in store for me there that I’m just not able to see yet. Regardless, I am grateful to God for all the spiritual lessons I learned during my entire stay here in Massachusetts. And as I take the final step of my spiritual leap of faith in just a little while from now, I’ll be sending my love to all the people I’ve known here in Massachusetts, as each of you helped me in your own way to grow into the spiritual person I am today.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson