Saying YES to God

I have changed so much in the past five years. The person of that time would barely recognize the person I have become.

Physically, my weight and height are the same. But my formerly wavy hair and flat abs have given way to a short boyish cut and a roadmap of scars on my abdomen. I used to wear clothes that clung to my body and showed my naturally thin shape. I now wear clothes designed to accommodate my breast prosthesis and my colostomy bag.

Internally, I have changed even more. I am more conscious of my breathing and infinitely grateful for each breath. My patience feels longer and I feel more accepting of others.

The biggest public change is that I am more conscious of my relationship to God. I try to be guided by Him. I now work to be open to His guidance, and to do His will as it is put in front of me, each moment. I’m not perfect at it, but there have been times recently that, when I do as He asks, a wellspring of Grace seems to flow forth.

It isn’t always easy. Sometimes, I feel like He asks me to do things that I imagine to be difficult, and I need to ask for His help to even attempt to do them. Sometimes, I decide not to do them at all.

But sometimes I do step into the place where I am guided, to do the thing that I am told to do, in full faith and confidence that He is there with me. In these times, afterwards, I am so filled with a deep joy that I only want more, more, more. I don’t know how to get it. I’m only happy that it exists, and hope that it comes my way again.

I struggled to describe this, and then I got a note from my friend, Shira, and she put it so well:

Somehow, blessedly, I have landed in a sweet spot. It has to do with realizing my choice, and that choosing to say yes to life, again and again and in all of its flow and movement is my deepest calling and lesson. So I keep saying, “Okay God, take me.” And I don’t mean to the eternal but rather to a merging that allows me also to experience the divine in our embodied existence…I can feel…, or rather hear, my deepest self saying “yes to life,” again and again.

Yes. That is it. Saying yes to life, and yes to God, connected through us, through each and every one of us, through our individual lives.