Have you ever been heading along your quiet way and been completely thrown off course? No, I’m not talking about the time (like, yesterday) that your day was hijacked by a rush job or sick child or a trip to the vet… what about something bigger?
Like a complete hijacking of your LIFE?
Ever had that happen? [Yeah, me too.]
You will KNOW if you have had this happen. A life hijacking is a point or event after which you realize you never, ever, never will be the same. There is a distinct before and after of said hijacking event.
I don’t mean the life events you planned either, like a job change or an extra-special vaca. I mean the sorry suckers that came and found you. You were all innocently cruising along, adulting and stuff, and BAM. Hijacked.
This could be a scary-as-hell diagnosis, a horrible accident, the loss of a loved one. This could be a house fire, a severe betrayal, a tanked business, or a decimated relationship. I’m talking about the life stuff that when it happens, it leaves you stunned, grasping for center, and out of breath… maybe for months.
Yeah? [Me, too.]
And then, when you gain your breath, you find yourself lying on the ground wondering just how in the hell you ended up there? Wondering who did it, or how YOU did it, and how the hell you didn’t see it coming? And at the same dang time deeply, deeply concerned about how the heck you will ever recover.
Have you ever laid there, in that place of grief and mourning? Weeping? Checking yourself for wounds? Recovering? Praying? Planning? Seeking? But for what you don’t know?
And then, in that dark place, something shifts and suddenly there is light? Just a small beam, but it is so full of peace and joy that you are fully intrigued by that little light. And right in the middle of that mess, that little light became bigger, fuller, more persistent? And you couldn’t see it everyday at first, but each day it grew a just a little stronger and stronger and brighter and brighter? Until, a few weeks or months or years later, you don’t know how you ever lived life without it? That Light?
And, as that Light shines brighter and brighter, have you ever gotten back up from your hijacking and realized that, although broken and still healing, you are so very, very thankful, not for the wreck, but for the breaking? Because in the brokenness you found your light? That, although the event that changed everything isn’t one you hope to re-experience anytime soon, that you will be forever grateful that the event happened because it helped you find a truer, greater, and deeper you?
In that Light you found strength, clarity, connection, and maybe even a glimpse at your purpose?
In fact, after the hijacking you found peace. A peace that no person or happening can shake. A deeply-seated peace that is accompanied by a knowing that so much of what we worry about is simply frivolous. The trappings of a mind that is in a habit of creating worry and danger were nothing much of it exists. A pure and real and personal place of knowing that with the survival of that event, you can fully depend on yourself to make it. Because God brought you to your Light. His Light.
And there is peace in that. Peace that surpasses all understanding.
Why is it we often try and keep these experiences from our businesses? Like our life-altering events don’t change who we are as business owners, as well as who we are at our core? But, what if these hijackings — or rather the finding of our Light — IS intended to effect us there, too? To help us see our strengths and gifts and purpose?
What if your story isn’t just supposed to change you, it is supposed to change how you show up and how you serve?
What if it is supposed to change the brightness of your Light? The Light you use to call to others who are broken, splayed on the floor and fully out of breath after their hijacking.
Those hijackings are damn painful. But if we let them, they’ll bring us, our families, and even our businesses — as well as those struggling around us — into the Light.
Lots of love,
JoDee
Additional Resources:
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