Written By Tierra Johnson
Seasons change.
Regardless of color, sex, status or self-fulfilling prophecy, one has to ask themselves in the changing of the seasons, “Who am I and what am I choosing in life?” or more vividly, “What is choosing me?”
We don’t always see it coming, but when it does, we have felt it before somewhere inside. That creepy feeling up your back as the external chaos begins to seep in, filling you up and loading you down.
The weight is the struggle of the season. It’s the catalyst that either propels you into the next, or keeps you pinned down in one long past. Depending on your choosing.
My last profound lesson in this was the first time that I had begun to put all of my new working pieces together to make the next wave of decisions.
My decisions define me now more strictly than ever. I am a woman who has been a mother for almost the whole of my adult life. It is a constant and unwavering decision that I am responsible for taking care of my children and my decisions shape the people that they are going to be mentally, physically and emotionally. It is my greatest joy in life and it is also my highest calling. Nothing I will ever do will be more important than who I am to these souls with whom I have been divinely entrusted.
The pressure is real. No matter what is going on in our lives, some things are constant and we cannot be moved.We only learn to bend to keep from being broken.
Check out the inverse though. I am also a visionary and a creative being with a purpose to be an instrument of expression. I do this through my writing and what I am compelled to write about. This requires a state of freedom and keeping the creative channels open. I am reaching to have a meeting of the minds with every reader. Like being a mother, this is also a high calling. They are intertwined within me. One feeds and informs the other, and vice versa. So as I take care of the kids, I also see that I am the only one who takes care of me. The caring of me is the caring of the instrument and it is imperfect. Therefore, I have to put in work at times to water my own grass and turn my own soil, be still and reach out to seek counsel. These have been hard-learned, yet liberating, practices as well as the first step on the path.
I had a lesson on the importance of this recently and it wasn’t the first time, however it was the first time that I had begun to put all of my new working pieces and perspectives together and make decisions. I had a rough patch toward the end of last year. I was looking for a new place, Christmas was coming and I was about to have two children attending two different schools. I was also trying to figure out how to unlock a bad writer’s block and get started on the body of my book. I had become physically ill from all the stress, and felt like I had no one to talk to. I reached out to a group of women where I had found continuous inspiration and sisterhood. One of these women for whom I have a great deal of respect, reached out to me and with a much needed phone call. I was obliged.
As she and I spoke, I told her about this discomfort I was feeling. It was deeply rooted in my gut, where I was beginning to have intolerable physical pain. I was tired and stressed, but in a way I could not explain, my spirit was fighting like hell to break free from the mental constraints of 9-to-5 life, motherhood, relationships, holding on and expectations.
However, in the midst of it all, I began to read “The Complete Works of Florence Scovel Shinn.” In this amazing prose, I found a heightened sense of spiritual order. I began practicing it. I was refusing to collapse and I was going to keep going like I always do, but the stress was manifesting in me physically and I needed relief. She listened intentionally and after I was able to sum things up. She said, “It sounds to me like you are ascending.”
Now it was my turn to listen.
She explained how ascension feels and how I had to accept my pursuit in life even if it meant letting ideas, expectations and people fall away from me that simply were not going where I was. She insisted that there was something in me needing to be birthed from my struggle, and although I had not completely realized it, my ascension was happening and I was very much seeking it.
Something began to unlock inside while listening to her words. I knew that I was dealing with a movement bigger than the moment. I knew that I was being called. Nothing I felt seemed insurmountable, instead it was part of an ordained plan to prepare me for the abundance that was about to find it’s way into my life. I knew that I had gotten so uncomfortable with the way things were that I had no choice but to change it, but the change began in my mind and more intricately, in my spirit. By the hand of the divine, space was being cleared for it. The fence I had constructed inside finally began to crumble and now was the time for me to clear the rest of it away. It’s powerful when you get that in a 30-minute phone call. It’s a feeling that redefines everything.
Sound familiar?
It starts for us all in a place where we have encountered worry, troubles, heartbreak and a severe cognitive dissonance in our pathology of life.
A place where we are dreaming without the tools we feel we need. Stumbling while we live on less gratitude and develop unhealthy habits regarding how to cope with the happenings we believe are causing us grief.
We put faith and trust in people and things. When that does not serve us, we place blame and turn everywhere but inward,the only place where the real noise resides.
The truth is stirring within, calling us to take our place. It’s the ground that is fixing to break. I started working from within and practicing the mental and spiritual awareness I needed. I let some things go intentionally, and like a game of Tetris, they were replaced with something better suited for my life in that moment. As I sit here writing this I have a notebook, filling up with the thoughts and descriptions I need for my book. When you walk toward what you fear in life, things happen like that. Yet we tend to forget, or in some extreme cases, we never come to know.
No one is perfect, but like the late Dr. Maya Angelou said, “Life loves the person who dares to live it.” Things begin to make sense in only a way that an awakening can allow us to comprehend. After receiving my breakthrough regarding my struggles last year, I started the new year by attending a workshop where I was given an anonymous letter filled with beautiful messages. None of which I can remember off the top of my head, except the very last line, which stated:
“You are in a high place.”
I was reflecting with an introspective curiosity about life. Analyzing the repetition of my struggles; dealing with the roots of self-inflicted dormancy and how the discomfort would arise again and again. I had a habit of putting away the signal in my mind that comfort is fleeting and the discomfort was the language of my calling. I came to understand something my father had been telling me my whole life: “The kingdom of Heaven comes from within. Free your mind and your ass will follow.”
I was indeed in a high place and there are no coincidences.
When you are able to cultivate an aerial view of who you are, what you believe, and your moral foundation, you will better understand the landscape of your life. That means seeing it for what it is and being challenged to strategically navigate the terrain in order to build the kingdom that you want and need. That is the gift of being in a high place. It is accessible from wherever you are in life.
It’s not comfortable. Your ears may pop while reaching new altitudes within, making your attitude less that favorable. You will be tested by the turbulence of others around you as you begin to rise. It takes time and an almost skin-crawling unrest to recognize that the discomfort that we feel in those moments is the same discomfort we feel with every struggle. However, each time we arrive to this familiar place we have new tools constructed from the last time.
We know what it looks like and the mechanics we can use to break through. The inner turmoil is the indicator. Let the discomfort be the alarm that you are capable of so much more and now is the time to rise and take that aerial view, unafraid.
Ascension into a high place allows you to see that there is so much more to learn about the truth of who you are and the truth of those around you.
In coming to know your truth while on high, you contend with no one while pushing through to be seen. You now have a heightened sense of validity from within. We all have choices.Challenge yourself to take everything that comes at you from a position of ascension.
Keeping that pursuit is your divine protection and adds layers to the process, which is the most underrated part of the journey. Go higher. Strive to be in a high place each day you are granted because, believe it or not, there is a road to be traveled up there and it is indeed the only road that matters.
Tierra Johnson is a Writer/Best Selling Author of, “20 Beautiful Women” Vol. 4 She resides in Seattle W.A and is the mother of two boys. She has contributed to multiple online publications including Nia Magazine, Like a Boss Girls, MyBrownBox.com and the Huffington Post. She currently working to complete her first solo project.
Email- Poeticplottwist@gmail.comFacebook- www.facebook.com/theTMMprojectInstragram- @Tmjthisladythislife
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