When I was young, I would periodically experience a happiness unlike anything else.  Bursting and unable to be contained, as if a crack opened up inside of me and the brightest possible light shown forth, I would feel beyond giddy.  It was as though my feet were hovering above the ground.

It would happen randomly.  In the early years, I didn’t recognize this as something special.  I continued to experience this as I aged, though with less frequency, and I began to be grateful for the experience when it actually happened.  The last time I remember feeling that way, was after I’d moved to Sun Valley. I don’t remember when exactly, but likely I was in my early 30’s.  It seems the wave of joy was especially prevalent when I was on the precipice of new opportunities in life and when everything seemed possible.  Maybe it had to do with excitement around the, as yet consciously unknown…but perhaps subconsciously known opportunities that were coming my way.  High school graduation and college, studying abroad, starting work in my dream job, getting married, the impending birth of my daughter?  I can’t really say.

As I explored the depth of my spirituality, in my mid-life, and tried to sink deeper into it, I began to wonder if maybe those feelings I experienced could be what it feels like on the other side of the veil.  Pure, unadulterated joy.  It was an unearthly happiness.  Rob Gieselmann referenced something I found visually lovely in his book, Irony and Jesus; Parables, Miracles & Stories.  He remembers reading that “physicists now regard the physical world as being comprised of forty-something dimensions or universes.  Given the right circumstances, it is possible for immeasurable pieces from this dimension to translate their existence into the dimension next door, much like, as one physicist described it, air passing through a screen door.”  Was I standing near the screen door when there was a bit of a rip in that screen, sending the love and joy from another dimension into my soul?

Of late, my life has been in a “two steps forward, one step back” state of being.  Last fall, thanks to a friend, I unwittingly began to emerge from under the clouds that had dogged me since Gary’s passing.  I was knowing real happiness again.  It was a narrow path out, which at times seemed to grow wider, until things felt difficult again and the path narrowed all over.  Three years on, I feel largely out from under the clouds of “Gary grief” (except for about a week before the anniversary of his passing and on our wedding anniversary) due in part to my faith and the strong sensation that Gary has not gone far, like maybe he’s cheering me on from the other side of the screen door.  He wants me to do well and be happy again. I feel that to my core, in a way that comes in the dreams which feel real and in instincts that are intuitive – like a subconscious knowing.  With the business sold and my finding focus on other projects, I walk forward on a widening path with eyes open trying to seek what is next.

Maybe I need to stop seeking so hard and let it come.  Become child-like again in that regard… Is that where the joy is found?  When my spirit can be free from conscious self-dictation to tell me through light and love that something meaningful is coming my way.  As an adult with responsibilities and specifically as a mother, I’ve become so accustomed to taking charge and taking care of everyone else that letting go of that habit is a challenge.  There were so many years of knowing my path forward, making life easy, or at least easier.  This time of transition has been disruptive to the seemingly rote and familiar, but I’m living into the changes now and am ready for what’s next.  If my feet start to lift off the ground and the giddy bursts out, then maybe I’ll have come back home to the essential me.  A changed, but familiar me.

Maybe that’s the key.  I (we) need to relinquish trying to overly craft what lies ahead and trust in the game plan, the path, God.  It’s not something with which I’m unfamiliar but may need to brush up on.  I don’t know that I’ll ever experience that crazy happiness again where my feet feel above the ground. That seems a long way away at the moment.  For now, it is good, if difficult at times, to be moving forward again.  Open to joy.