Phoenix

"I isolated myself from people and things that might tear me down."

 

These words were spoken by a teenage girl in San Diego when asked how she made it.  She was featured on a national morning news program today.  This young woman made my heart swell.  She made my brain stretch.  She made my faith and belief in humanity take one more step.

 

She and her family spent the last couple of years homeless, having nothing much to eat, no where to live.  5 of them trying the best way they can to survive.  In a community where a mind boggling number children in the school systems are homeless, where over a thousand of this girls classmates are in trouble with the law, where the drop out rate is raising faster than The Monkey's disapproval rate, where almost 2/3 of teenage girls end up pregnant, this young woman graduated high school with straight A's and is on her way to  college.

 

She is a Phoenix rising out of the ashes.

 

My mother has always said, "Self preservation is the key."  She's absolutely correct.  One must do what one has to do to take care of ones self.  It's not always easy, but it's always necessary.  No one can succeed for us.  No one can pull us out of our ashes but ourselves. 

 

I think about the young girl in California.  I know that she's just one of many people in the world who share the same story.  And there are other stories that also deserve to be told.  Millions of them, perhaps.  An organization which is very close to my heart has a slogan: "Behind every decision, behind every choice, is a story."  We all have stories.  We all have had defining moments where a specific choice has changed the courses of our lives.

 

We all have Phoenix moments of our own, don't we?  Moments of rebirth, recreation.  Moments of change and growth and hope and uncertainty.  Moments where we know that we can never (and should never) go back, we don't know what the future holds, but that we refuse to fail, refuse to be anything but successful, no matter how hard it is.  Sometimes that means accepting things we don't want to accept, sometimes that means accepting people we don't want to accept, and sometimes that means isolating ourselves from folks and things that we cannot accept.

 

Sometimes it's easy to stay in the fire pit.  Sometimes it's easier to just stay down and not rise again.  I know that there have been times in my life that I've stayed in the ashes longer than I should have.  I can see places in my past where certain decisions I made took my life places I'd rather not have gone.  I can also look back and see where I some how chose the right thing, took the right path, and my scorched, seared reality again took on a shine and glowed as if brand new.

 

Taking a look at my emotional plumage, I can see that I still have some burned and singed feathers.  I have some that are about to fall out and I also have some that are brand new, regrowing.  There's some shiny patches and some gnarly spots.  It's a work in progress - but it's getting better.  I'm rising a bit higher and higher out of the pit every day.  It's hard work, but I can do it.  We all can do it.

 

How are your feathers?  Have you checked them lately?  I should check mine more often than I do.  I should do a personal inventory more regularly.  After all, I have to shake all the dust off before I can fly.