Heart Map

I am in a place to really value the Robert Louis Stevenson quote Melody put up for us: "To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive."

With the job search I am beginning, it is a particularly important time for me to know what I prefer, and I am making some hard decisions. For the first time in my life, I am choosing family over the first, most obvious opportunity for gainful employment. I am choosing keeping my soul alive over the first, most obvious, opportunity for gainful employment. It is scary! Julie used images of leaping, soaring, and living free. I'm trying to figure out how to be there, while also sorting out what that means for living-in-the-world and making an income.

Here's what I learned from my collage:

• I want to live in or near natural beauty.
• Connection, relationship, and community are very important to me.
• I have been connected to, in the last 8 years, two places that have taught me a tremendous amount about relationship, and living in community. I don't want to let go of those places. I need to let go, to some extent--it's time for this bird to leave her parents' nest--but I also want to find a way to keep the relationships I developed there, and to let them evolve.
• And lastly, at the heart of all of this is my relationship with music, and my desire to help others feel a sense of connection, either to themselves or to others, through sharing in music.

I am closing doors here so that new ones might open. I am knocking on doors, and seeing who answers them. I am working to put the weight of my faith into knowing that Husband and I will find a place that fits for us--when the time is right.