My Path Companion and Gratitude

I could have been shot dead by now.

This according to two friends of mine regarding my marriage and my role in it the last few years.

It was meant partially as a joke, but the metaphor is quite powerful. There is truth here.... and it did not go unnoticed.

Personal transformations can be difficult, unsettling, and often confusing. They involve the potential (whether realized or not) to see large changes occur in your life. When I say large, I mean large like moving your home, quitting a secure job to follow your passion, creating additional income, and altering relationships.

My transformation process for the last 5 or 6 years has involved a couple of the changes mentioned and many others as well. The short version goes like this. Five years ago, I was an airline pilot for United Airlines working out of Chicago. Due to the "911" event and a subsequent company bankruptcy, my quality of life as a United pilot was in the dumper. Schedules were requiring maximum time away from home, and commuting from Minneapolis to Chicago didn't help. My daughter was 2 then, and it was clear that my family life was going to suffer for a long time if something didn't change. Even tho I asked really nicely for better schedules, United said take it or leave it, so I left it.

The next years involved a combination of efforting to find new sources of income and efforting to find passion for something new in my life. Lots of effort all the way around and ultimately lots of dollars spent on businesses and trainings with very little income to show as a result. Financially, not a good mix. And spiritually, the mix didn't feel any better. I had, and still have, large philosophical questions about where I am, where we all are, how we got here, why things are so difficult, etc., etc. I would frequently get bogged down in angry rants about how it all didn't make any sense and that I shouldn't have to work so hard to understand, only to be frustrated and disappointed. Taking the victim stance, I wasn't able to engage in anything "productive". The hardest part was I had the impression I may never really get answers to these large questions, and maybe that's the indication there isn't a need to know. But I was using part of my old pilot mentality; sort of a "need to know" approach.

Eventually, I found the "juice", the motivation, and yes the passion for my coaching practice. Long time coming, but nice to have it finally arrive. Which brings us up to now. We're broke, renting a temporary place after moving twice in a year, starting a new business in earnest in a down economy, continuing our personal growth processes, raising our daughter, and stretching ourselves to the limit in many different ways.

And all along this interesting, frustrating, enraging, freeing, captivating, maddening, and somehow useful process, there is my wife, supporting me every step of the way.

I can imaging some of the difficulty she has experienced watching me struggle and complain and flounder and languish in my process. She has shown me compassion, caring, fear, anxiety, stress, encouragement, resentment, pain, anger, guidance, trust, and ultimately unconditional love. She has witnessed with me the breaking down of old patterns and barriers while sometimes not having a clue about what the replacement will be. For both of us, holding trust in the universal energy to keep us on our essential paths without knowing the course can at times be relieving and at other times excruciating. Thru all of our troubles, issues, and transformations, somehow, she is still behind me 100%.

So here I still am. Not shot dead; much to the contrary. Whether she considered such an act, I have my doubts. She is the strongest person I have ever known, and rarely entertains such thoughts. Examining our relationship however, is an ongoing discussion and this is a good thing.

To say I am grateful for Shannon is an over-simplification of the greatest magnitude. What she brings to me and our relationship and the world is amazing. And tho I don't always remember to be grateful, she is a gift beyond measure. Many partners would have left the relationship way before now, but Shannon is still my wife, my companion, my soul mate. Thank you Shannon, I love you.


Food for thought:

For whom in your life have you remembered to be grateful?
Have you told them recently?
What judgements did you make after reading the first two lines of this blog post?