The Yellow Door Life

It wasn’t the last risk I took, but I took a risk a couple years ago.

The risk wasn’t life or death, but it was something that made me very nervous. It made me feel vulnerable. It was a risk I had taken before.

Over the last few years, people have frequently said, “You’re so brave.”

For leaving Colorado.

For speaking up for myself.

For trying to heal my body, heart, and soul.

I was in survival mode though. I did what had to be done to keep going. To stay alive.

This risk I took wasn’t about survival, it was simply about putting my heart out there in a way I hadn’t done in more than a decade.

It was trying to make something welcome in my present, that I also had tried to make welcome in my past.

The risk didn’t pan out as I hoped, but that wasn’t the whole story. It still isn’t.

Sometimes we take risks in life and we know immediately whether they paid off. Say you buy a scratch ticket, for example, and you get into your car, scratch it, and find that you just won $5. Minimal risk. Small reward. No wait.

Some risks though are actually just seeds. You take a chance, ask a question, send an invitation, make a bet, and you pray for an answer. That answer may not always come right away, however.

Instead, taking the risk is about planting the seed and trusting that if it is meant to bear fruit it will. There is no instant gratification with that type of risk, but I believe, those risks, which are really just the deepest desires of our heart, take time. And are always worth the wait.

The last (biggest) risk I took hasn’t bore fruit yet and that’s ok. If it’s meant to, it will. Either way, the act of taking the risk, and trusting myself enough to be vulnerable, helped me to realize that I really am brave. Not all the time. But when it really matters, I know I will show up, and that’s the most important lesson of all.

❤