The Story We Tell Ourselves................................

I changed the story that I told myself about my life and for some time I felt like the biggest liar in the world, even though I was only lying to myself, it felt wrong. What I did not realize is…I wasn’t lying, I was simply changing the rules of the game…yes, this life we live is a game! There is a line in one of my favorite songs “In the Arms of an Angel”, and it reads “Sometimes we lie to make up for all that we lack”, and boy is that ever true. I do not care how perfect we look from the outside, we are all lacking something on the inside! Lying is an art form that I have never been that talented in and could never quite embrace. I am a truth seeker and teller, to a fault! With age, comes wisdom, hopefully and you learn to hold your tongue and not speak everything you see, feel and think. But what I have learned is whether consciously or not…we ALL lie to ourselves in one way or another. Recently, in my mid-forties, ouch!, I have been going through, let’s say a mid-life evolution, I despise the term mid-life crisis because I don’t believe that we are in a crisis! Go to some third world country and you’ll see a crisis but not here in the Bible Belt. The biggest crisis we have going on here is judgmental homophobes scared to death that marriage equality is going to destroy their marriage and America as we know it ~ We can only hope and pray right?! Just a tid-bit here of wisdom and knowledge ~ you never lose when you GIVE!!! Anyway, back to my mid-forties evolution. I found myself, like many in their forties, in a funk. I felt like I was on that game show Jeopardy…saying, “I’ll take ‘What the Hell have I done with my Life’ for $1000 Alex?! You start to examine your accomplishments or the lack there of. I, myself, being a mother of three and a wife/mother/mentor of one, had lost myself. The once vibrant Janis Joplin persona I embodied so well had all but disappeared. Where was she? She was knee deep in loads of laundry and spaghetti! Also I noticed, in my mid-forties, I started to crackle and pop, like a bowl of Rice Crispies, and what once was music to my ears in my youth, made me feel old and over the hill. You know that whole concept of ‘Over the Hill’ is wrong! We should embrace being ‘Over the Hill’, that simply means the arduous climb is over and now, like a little kid, we can just roll down the other side ~ lest were are too fearful that we might break something! Anyway, I woke up one day and out of nowhere my right shoulder is killing me! I take a couple of Advil and go on with my daily chores and obligations. About six months later, around Thankgiving, I lose total use of my right arm. Now, I failed to mention earlier, that I have played the guitar my whole life and now with this ‘gimpie fin’ I can no longer play anything! Not surprisingly, I fell into a deep depression….well more like a, ‘Whoa is me digression’! I sought the help of a chiropractor who about killed me, but he was oh so cute! Finally, I went and got a MRI and found out that I had a tear in my rotator cup. Ouch!!! With a few shots and therapy, not that kind of therapy, although I have embraced that also many years ago, I was on the mend. I still could not reach my right arm around my acoustic guitar without tremendous pain, so I decided that I would buy myself a slim line electric guitar and of course, I would need an amp to go along with that new guitar. Long story short, I bought the most beautiful red electric guitar, upped the ante and bought a whole PA system which then led into a friend of mine wanting me to try it all out at his winery. That gig at the winery led to another gig and there I was… in my mid-forties…gimpie fin and all…doing what I did in my twenties just to pay the rent…. I was doing what I loved... what I was made to do! You never know why you get injured….why life seems so unfair sometimes…why you are dealt the hand that nobody wants…but sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are actually beautiful dreams from our subconscious…stories yet lived and possibilities planted…yet to be harvested. Sometimes the thorn in your side is the only opening for God to get in and your light to shine out. I have taken the road less traveled and it has make all the difference in the world ~ join me?!