This week I spotlight another writer friend of mine, Corneil Vacirca. Corneil, like me, is a romance writer, and with the new year she’s decided to make a major life change. I am so very proud of her and support her decision whole-heartedly. I asked if she’d be willing to guest-post on my blog and, being the amazing writer she is, she sent me the following.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Jump and the net will appear.”
A friend gave me those words as I contemplated making a major life change. Almost anyone looking from the outside in, could easily think I had lost my marbles. It made no sense to give up the predictability, comfort, security of what was to take a chance on something that might only could be.
But her words were a gift of profound impact.
When I’ve come to crossroads in life, I’ve studied all of the angles, turned the situation upside down, inside out. My approach would lead you to believe that an approach with through analyzation would mean a successful outcome, right? Funny how life doesn’t work that way.
I’ve lived by the idea that God would open and close the right doors, all I had to do was pay attention and walk through or away. But what if the door I thought was open, was just made of glass? And when I walked through it would shatter and leave me with cuts and covered in so many shards of glass it would takes months of tweezer work to fully recover.
What if the door that felt like it was closing just needed a good kick to open and be the right one I was supposed to walk through all along?
But what if it wasn’t about doors at all? What if wasn’t about right or wrong ones to walk through? What if it was about the leap? What if I was supposed to take it even when I couldn’t see anything but rocks at the bottom of the cliff? What if I just took a chance and believed there really was always a net?
When I thought about it a little bit more I realized I have been blessed to live surrounded by jumpers.
My Nana’s husband died of heart failure at age 42, leaving her with five kids and a house that was in the middle of a future freeway in a tiny Northern New Mexico town. When the state bought the house, she could have kept going along the easy path hugging the cliff. Stay in the tiny town full of family support. Nope, she didn’t do that. She jumped and moved 300 miles away from that tiny town to the city so that her kids would have more and better opportunities. Her net is now full of grandkids and their families, all extremely grateful she leaped.
My sister had a great job as a marketing director in the tech world in her 30’s. But a corporate division break up and sale left her with a choice. One path with the old company, one with the new. But instead of turning left or right along the paved trail, she kept walking. She went straight to the edge of the cliff and jumped. She moved to an island off the coast of Honduras to teach. Nope she didn’t have a degree in education or a teaching license or certificate. But her net appeared anyway. Eventually that net included a husband, family and the opportunity to open her own school.
It’s scary to believe in the net, especially when you can’t see it. And when it appears it might be made up of frayed strands of rope held together with knots and duct tape. But it’s there. It’s always there. Because it’s made within us. It is created with our strength, with our resilience, our heart, and our very souls. It is weaved with the love of family, of friends, of faith that make each of us unique and special. And when we believe in ourselves enough to listen to that little voice of our spirit speaking to our heart, we can be certain the net will appear, so go ahead and leap.
