The Vision of an Eagle | Where are You Going?

As a child I LIVED in my imagination.  It was perfect and I could be anything I wanted – mostly I was a cheetah (loved cheetahs) or some sort of mystical creature from the likes of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was often a heroine or an underdog of some sort, battling injustice or fighting against the odds for some greater cause. In many ways, you could have said I was a dreamer who never had my sights set in reality. However, the reality was there in many forms – In fact I think one of life’s greatest tragedies is when we stop believing we could be great at something, even if it’s realising that we are great if we are being ourselves.  You see, the reality was my VISION of who I was meant to be – from a young age, I was never satisfied with “average”.   I believed in beating the odds; being determined and persistent [ok, stubborn] … I was sensitive and perceptive to wrongs and felt a very strong desire to set things right or seek resolution or justice.  This also happened to get me into trouble quite often as I had a brass-necked approach – especially as a teenager LOL

Except for the imaginary animals and the cheeky brass neck, I am exactly the same today.  Through the ups and downs of my childhood, I never lost sight of the vision to be who I felt I needed to be. Yes, there have been many times I was lost, or apathetic toward “greater” things, leading to wrong decisions, many questionable actions or inactions.  Times of depression, thoughts of suicide, poor self-esteem, believing I was worthless, that I had nothing interesting to say, and certainly for many years I believed nobody liked me … these things often become true, if you let your attitude change as a result.  So for a long time, I felt very alone and was (and still am sometimes) very self-critical.  However, through all of this negativity, I never stopped believing there was good and value to be found… I just didn’t know where to find it.

Having a vision for your life isn’t just about having physical goals or desiring more than what you have, or even feeling the highs of happy moments (believe me, you can still have highs in the midst of depression and emptiness). Having vision is about seeing beyond any outward challenge and reaching inward to that central point (that is really hard to explain) that feeds the desire to sit still and just listen.  You soon realise that this “vision” was there all along!  If you let yourself sit still (stillness and peace are so important in this process), you can easily feel where your life is not lining up to your vision for WHO YOU ARE.

If all you ever feel or say is: “I’m so busy”, then you will never break free of that and you will remain trapped in that endless chaos that distracts us so easily from the true path of our life.

It’s very easy to measure our lives by the things we do, the people we know, the people who like us or the things we accumulate – but how often do you ask yourself: WHY you do the things you do? What are you hoping to get? Where are you going?

A few years back, I began a journey (unknown at the time) to truly realise my vision. What I thought was a path to better physical fitness, a better looking body and [through that] happiness; instead I was lead to a complete renewal of my mind and a total rebirth of my character – I am becoming who I [and God] always wanted me to be.  My understanding of this related to my Christian faith, but I still wanted to share this “moment” with you all because I see so many people forget their heart’s “set-point” … that pulling inside you that grabs you every once in a while to say: “you are meant for more than this!”.  Often, fear, lack of confidence, getting comfortable in our ways, feeling obligated to others, chasing money, feeling we simply don’t deserve more etc are barriers to us believing and following our vision.  Whether you share my beliefs or not, you cannot deny the emptiness people try to fill in their lives.

This was a very meaningful reading the other morning for me:

As I mentioned briefly in my last blog, I have resigned from Nursing to pursue a new venture in doing pretty much this.  I honestly have no idea where it will lead; all I do know is that I am free to express myself and it allows me to bring to life my vision of WHO I am and allows me to focus on reaching out in ways that are true to that.  Here is the moment after I handed in my resignation:

It might seem a little egotistical of me to think I have some special greatness or such-like and I just want congratulated on this venture …  but I am trying to tell (and illustrate) the power of having a vision! It’s not just in me – you have vision, too! No matter what you are doing, who you are – you should strive to be great at it.  As children we are full of aspirations, imaginations and beautiful creativity … where does that go? As a child, I had the ability to make the best of a “bad” situation: making toys out of nearly anything or even nothing at all.. yet so many adults are so dissatisfied and unhappy because they live in a mindset of “lacking” or “seeking” – yet these things we think are missing are closer to home than we realise 🙂

Perhaps we resist looking inward because it just too difficult to face who we have become while searching for who we really are.

I know some of you don’t share in my faith, but I felt this devotional was very appropriate for what I was going through the other day when I finally completed my last shift. Filled with mixed emotions (feelings of freedom, joy and fear), my mum left this out for me as I got home from work on the morning of July 8th:

With that in mind, here is a video right after I left the hospital!  I will miss many of my colleagues and many things about nursing, but I decided a long time ago that I wanted to do something else. At that time, I didn’t know what … now I have a better idea. I hope this journey never ends, because it has allowed me to see the world in brighter colours than ever before!

Are you a Chicken or an Eagle?