A Powerful Lesson

By Angela Hutchinson

All people are born into the world to conquer challenges, learn valuable lessons, and to experience who they really are.  We are born into specific families with specific circumstances that just so happen to be perfect for each life.  I’m not sure how it happens.  Do we make pre-soul contracts?  Do we live out karma?  Your guess is as good as mine.  However, I have paid attention lately and I have witnessed providence in motion in my own life.  This world is beginning to make sense to me.

I was born into a patriarchal, conservative family in the Midwest.  I am the middle child of 6.  As far back as I can remember I’ve always given my power away.  I guess I didn’t feel special enough to own it.

As a young girl I submitted to a domineering, authoritative father.  I learned that when I surrendered my power, it made others accept and love me more.  People stopped fighting when I gave in.  I learned to reside in vulnerability.  Maybe that’s why I was known as a “worry wart”.  I denied my power which made me subject to the ability of others to meet my needs.  Sometimes those needs went unmet.  I learned how to be a silent victim.  I carried this submissive girl with me into adulthood.  I entered relationships with her, I started my career with her, and I even became a wife and mother as she sat waiting to be hurt yet again.  No one here escapes soul growth and sometimes it burns.  I believe self empowerment is one of the main reasons for my presence on the planet.

The thing about power is that if it isn’t claimed, internal balance cannot exist and the lopsided vulnerable being that I was, experienced life without the ability to participate or choose how I wanted to live my life.  I was reactionary and completely dependant on what was happening in my environment.  Without power, I also experienced a lack of abundance.  How can anyone experience abundance and prosperity and be poor in spirit? 

I don’t blame myself for not having an internal sense of self.  I did the best I could do as a child.  I survived.  I did what worked at the time.  However, I no longer exist in that world.  In fact, I’ve been safe for quite some time, but old habits and ways of living die hard.  Lost in a large family, I gave in.  I gave my power to whoever I encountered.  I felt frustrated and filled with rage at my own helplessness.  My bank account and spirit had a negative balance.  Nothing in your life can fit until you know and experience who you were born to be.  To live small the way I did actually served no one but dysfunction.  I attracted some conflict, judgment, poverty and anxiety into my life over and over again.  I grew weary, had pity parties, and picked myself up again.  Then one day something changed.   The Universe generously offered me Her wisdom yet again, and for the first time I understood I needed to accept.  I extended my hand for help because I had reached a very large impasse.  The Great Spirit will offer you Her wisdom at many points along the journey, but She can’t make you take it.  The road can get trickier with every denial we make, until we reach a pivotal crossroads of crisis.  Then it slows you down or brings you to your knees and urges you to take a long hard look at yourself.  I was tired of living a life of inauthentic words, fear, and anger.  This victim was through.  I grasped on to this wisdom, clenching it with all the strength I could find and I humbled myself.  I surrendered the need to be right and I surrendered my imbalanced self perception.

Authentic Power is a wonderful, spiritual gift.  It allows us permission to trust our inner guide.  It allows us the opportunity to steer our own vessel and to experience the vastness of an abundant Universe.  I have witnessed abusive power, greedy power, and inauthentic, external power.  I didn’t realize that power needed to be embraced and experienced, because within it contains the key to self love and acceptance.  It is the Spirit taking care of the Soul.  It means boundaries, protection, integrity and self realization.  I was ready to claim that integral part of me that was left by the road in childhood.  Power does not have to be threatening or overbearing.  It is a light that guides you through life.

 Don’t hide your light under a bushel.  Let it Shine, Let it Shine, Let it Shine.