Plowing the Road

 

In the recent days and weeks the news has been filled with stories of massive snow storms pummeling the east coast and the midwest with not inches, but feet of snow.  Living now in the Arizona desert I am fortunate that I do not have to contend with the long and brutal winters of “up north”,  but I do have many memories of my childhood growing up in Minnesota where the winters are unusually long, cold and snow-filled.  Most of the memories are great ones, I mean…when you’re a kid you get to play in the snow:  snow forts, snowmen, snow angels and snowball fights.  You don’t have to worry about de-icing the car or shoveling the sidewalk or getting everyone to work and school on time when there is a 4 foot berm blocking the driveway.  Gotta love the snow plows!

But honestly…thank goodness for the snow plows because without them no one would be able to move, the roads would be blocked, cars would be stuck and the flow of life on the road would stop.  In Lake Tahoe, CA where I lived for a short period of time they have the plowing down to a science.  I guess when you get 80 feet of snow in a season, you better have a good plan!  The giant plows would plow everything to the center of the roadway and then another giant snowblower type truck would come thru and pick it up and deposit all the snow into a dump truck that would carry it away somewhere and dump it leaving the roadway completely free and clear.  It was like a dance.  The flow on the roads never stopped, their path was clear.  Everything moved freely.

As I was watching and reading about all the snow I received a message from a friend that ended with “…I hope you are continuing to let peace in your life.”  and I thought about that.  “Letting peace into our lives”.  I think for the most part people assume they will either HAVE peace or NOT HAVE peace but it is entirely up to circumstance.  If we are lucky we will have Joy, Love, Peace.  If we are unlucky these things will elude us.  The truth is that all the things we truly want in our lives we can have if we make space for them.  So often we have filled ourselves up with resentment, sadness, anger, bitterness, shame and remorse from things, events and people in our past that there is no room for peace, joy, love, clarity or harmony to show up.  In order to let those things flow into our life we have to plow the road.  We have to clear out and remove all the feelings and hurts and disappointments of those past experiences and let them go so that the road is clear.  Once the road is clear the vehicles of grace, love, truth, joy, harmony and peace can travel freely and show up in abundance.

Plowing the road is not easy.  Shoveling out that 4 foot berm takes a lot of time and effort.  But it clears the path.  It keeps you from getting stuck.  It allows you to see the road ahead and keeps you moving forward.  So in answer to my friends message:  Yes!  The more I plow the road of the past, the more peace, love and joy can flow in to the present and the future.  It is a continuous process.  In each day that I let go of [remove] something painful, something joyful arrives.

We will always have pain, hurt and disappointment.  These things are a part of life.  But there is no point in holding on to them, they only create a roadblock.  Peace wants to come in to all of our lives if we would only let it.  As John Lennon said; “Give Peace a chance”.         Let go.  Move it out.  Plow the road.

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