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Rozanne Paxman
Guided by Invisible Links
"The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flashes or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact, they may be likened to an immersed chain, in which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links."
- Arthur Koestler
It is often difficult to make decisions. We stand at the edge of the cliff of possibilities, wondering if we will find ourselves landing in the soft hand of correctness or the harsh realities of mistakes should we step off the edge. It is particularly difficult to leap when the decision requires that we potentially risk what we have achieved or that we travel in a direction we have not experienced before.
It is my experience that the correctness or inaccuracy of a path manifests itself in one of two ways: If the decision is correct, it is accompanied with an underlying feeling of peace and lightness, despite any obstacles that must be overcome to achieve one's aims. Hope exists and tasks feel ultimately possible even if they require a great deal of effort. Over time, when the promised "light at the end of the tunnel" appears, we realize that the leap has placed us in the hand of God, where we have been safely sheltered from the beginning.
However, incorrect decisions can be spotted in the following ways: We feel a basic uneasiness about what we are trying to do. Goals feel hard to accomplish - as if we are trying to push through cement walls. Obstacles appear in unexpected places, and indecision abounds. The people in our life become peevish as they absorb our feelings. If we continue to stay on the broken path we have started, we find that the cloud that binds us gets thicker every day, making it more difficult to breathe. It may be hard to understand why feelings of depression exist or why goals are hard to achieve; we just know that it is so.
What causes the unease? I believe that in these instances, we have become so focused on what we want that our ears close, and we stop listening to answers that don't align with our desires.
It is a spiritual matter to hear God's answers, and one has to be willing to hear what is being said via the Spirit. Sometimes, the directions we receive don't quite make sense. Trust is required to accept what we are being told. Faith is requisite to act.
One Friday night in 2001, I felt impressed to stop by a second-hand store to see what might be found. Since that seemed like a nutty idea to me, I discounted it. Again, the feeling came, "Go to Deseret Industries."
"I need to go home and be with my family," I argued.
"It won't take that long," I was told again. "You can get in and out of the store in 30 minutes."
I would love to say that I listened to this three-time spiritual warning, but I didn't. As a result, I was involved in a serious car accident on the freeway. A man tried to cut across four busy lanes of traffic. As he entered the lane that I was in, he hit my car twice. As my vehicle spun around, I saw my life flash before my eyes and thought that I was going to die. I might have lost my life that day, but suddenly, in the middle of spinning and confusion, I heard a loud voice say, "GET OFF THE ROAD!"
"Oh, yeah!" I thought as I pulled hard on my steering wheel. Before the direction came, I hadn't thought of pulling off the road. Everything was moving so quickly - and yet so slowly - that my mind wasn't thinking clearly.
It so happened, that if I hadn't pulled on my wheel at that exact moment (not before it or after it), I would have flown over the edge of a precipice, and I wouldn't be writing this muse. My four children wouldn't have a mother, and my husband would be a widower.
The story of how my life was saved (and the gratefulness that I feel for cars with airbags) is immense, but if I had listened to the Spirit before I left the office and if I would have visited that second-hand store as I had been instructed, I would have avoided the accident and the 18 months of misery that followed.
A number of years ago, I made a business decision for Scrap Girls that started out with an accompanying uneasiness. I thought that the nervousness came because the goal would be quite intricate to accomplish. However, as we moved toward the goal, we discovered that everything felt hard to do. Questions that are usually answered easily were discussed endlessly, and ideas were thrown back and forth in a somewhat silly manner. The closer we came to the release of the project, the more uneasy we all became - only no one shared their feelings about the project. We just kept pushing forward because we felt that it was required that we finish what we had started.
And then, I got depressed... very depressed... lying-around-in-my-nightgown depressed... watching-TV-for-a-couple-of-days depressed. I didn't know why I was depressed, but I felt that a dark, thick cloud was surrounding me.
At last, I acquired the sense to ask Heavenly Father if the issue was caused by the project we were attempting to finish. As I prayed, I went over the feelings I had been experiencing. I realized that He had already answered my prayer - many times. He was trying to tell me to cancel the project. I summoned up the courage to announce my decision and found that everyone - everyone - was relieved that I had cancelled it.
Because I listened, the cloud lifted, peace flooded back in, and happiness returned to Scrap Girls land.
The challenge for each of us is to listen for the Spirit. In this busy, loud world of ours, it requires an effort to still ourselves and examine how we feel. It takes courage to listen to the insight received when logic tells us to do something else. But when we drive into the unknown, holding onto the One Who knows how to get to our destination safely, we arrive safe and sound.
No crashes required.
- Ro
Muse: To be absorbed in one's thoughts; engage in meditation. Not intended to solve the world's problems, another person's problems, or to cover topics completely. One does not have to agree with musings to enjoy them, just as one does not have to be the same as someone else to appreciate who they are.
Would you like to earn a $20 Gift Certificate? Send your own muse to [email protected]. If it is selected for publication in the Scrap Girls newsletter, you'll get to have fun shopping!
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