What influences have caused you to make changes in your life? This was a question posed in a group discussion I attended early in the week. Of the many responses that came to mind, the two that floated to the top of my list were invitation and loss. Invite means to "increase the likelihood of; request the presence or participation of." How often, when you look back at changes in your life, did they come as the result of a personal invitation? Not an email pitch, or meeting announcement. Someone asked you. And because you knew and trusted that someone, you were open to the invitation that you would have otherwise been closed to, had it not been for the personal invitation.
Grief and loss often evolve into an invitation to change. At first it feels more like a horrible intrusion, rather than an invitation. We never would have chosen it. But eventually when a significant loss befalls us - and we're listening - we hear it "request our presence" in a new reality and we accept the invitation. We make big and small changes that we never would have discovered had it not been for the absence of what was lost. And when we keep our hearts open to these invitations to transform, we discover that there are some beautiful dimensions in the tapestry of our changed life.
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