Samantha Lyons

Recently I woke up and smelled the coffee. I don’t know what else to tell you. It was as if every bit of advice I ever heard that mattered finally seeped in. The gates opened. The Hallelujah chorus sounded. The Lord himself tapped on my shoulder. I had a revelation.

And I wish I had it sooner. So, I have to share, otherwise it’d just be selfish.

Do you ever feel like you’re just sludging along?

That’s not even a word, and I know that you are familiar with the sludgin’ stage.

What I mean is, do you ever just feel in auto pilot or survival mode? Just driving to your job and ordering the same foods and passing the same people and trying to remember to text people back.

I’m going to be honest. I found myself in a full blown sludge. Just anxious and overwhelmed and so disconnected from the big picture. And the crazy thing is, I have a happy life, everything is fine. I had no obvious reason at all to feel how I felt. So I have been working really hard to figure out why the hell I was so on edge.

Regardless…

People were driving me insane. Every annoying thing that could happen to me was happening. I was left wide-eyed by stupidity and lack of common sense and ads on my social media and the price of chicken breast.

It gets better, keep reading.

I started to really think about when I felt not so sludge, and I considered my patterns during that time. I was writing a ton, I had just met the love of my life, I was waking up early and doing a job I was in love with where I had the opportunity to make a difference, I was exercising, I was laying out in the sun, I was taking chances, I was in control of my time, my life was filled with people who valued me. I was living in a pocket full of sunshine.

Then things happen, circumstances change, and it doesn’t have to be major like job changes or having kids or losing a loved one, though it can be.

But before we know it, our habits are completely different, and we are drinking coffee to get through the day and watching trash television or scrolling social media in our only free time, and we can’t remember if we had a single glass of water.

We’re pulling through chicfila and not working out and staring at our phones at dinner with our family. And we are telling ourselves it’s because we are too tired or too busy or too far gone.

Somewhere along the line we surrender small pieces of what make us feel whole.

We stop writing, we stop creating, we stop playing, we stop laughing, we stop loving, we stop letting people in, we stop eating healthy, we stop spending time in solitude, we stop praying, we stop giving, we stop hugging, we stop sharing, we stop running, we stop joking, we stop being honest, we stop learning. We just stop.

And not over night. But in every choice we make day-by-day, moment-by moment, we concede on the parts of us that bring our lives value and make us feel whole.

As kids, we were so in tune with what made us feel good. That is how we based every single decision. We danced in public and gave high fives and drank chocolate milk every single day for lunch. Why the F not?

We couldn’t wait to be grown ups and do whatever we wanted.

And now here we are, freaking blowing it!

It’s our big moment!

What in the world are we all waiting for?

Why are we wasting this incredible chance we have to do what makes us feel good? To throw caution to the wind. To reinvent our habits. To get outside. To give our full attention to the people who deserve our love. To take a chance. To grow. To go for a run. To start a business. To bird watch or paint or sing at the top of our lungs.

To just live unafraid to be ourselves and be authentic to what makes us feel alive.

We have one life.

You know? The one where we are all miracles that are somehow here in this moment of time that is merely a speck of all eternity.

Whatever it is your soul clings to, choose that.

❤

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@samanthalyonswrites