SING THE WORDS: I AM BLESSED.
{Photo via Pinterest}
By Kym Wilson
With my lungs heaving and thighs burning, I looked down at my feet so I wasn’t deterred by how much further I had to climb.
I was still in the heart of the Italian Alps and would spend yet another day continually walking up and down steep and rocky paths as I continued to make my way along the Via Francigena pilgrimage route to Ponte-Saint-Martin some 35 kilometers away.
Instead, I focused on taking step after step until I finally reached a plateau and clearing and looked up again. Below and behind me, the town of Chatillon was shrouded in sunlit mist. The path was littered with soggy autumn leaves richly rusted as they rotted.
Beneath them lay rocks and uneven ground hidden from view; I trod carefully so I did not fall or roll my ankles and kept glancing from the ground to the trees that glowed iridescent lime in the soft morning light.
I emerged from the enchanted woods and before me lay a long wooden walkway that jutted out over the side of the mountain. I had no idea how often this path was walked or how well it was maintained.
A few of the boards jutted up, but I had already climbed high and was not about to turn back and make my day’s walk any longer.
“Keep me safe,” I whispered as I stepped onto the boards walking close to the mountainside where I felt safer. Ahead of me, the ghostly valley wound its way between the two giant ridges of the Alps that towered above me. My awe of the view drowned my fear.
Here I was in Italy, climbing through the Alps alone with this view and this blessed morning light all to my self. Overcome by the beauty and sacredness, tears streamed down my cool cheeks.
I kept walking and took my phone out of my waist bag so I could play what felt like the perfect song for that moment — Blessed to be a Witness by Ben Harper.
I sang along, but as I started to sing the first line of the chorus, my lungs compressed around the words and they caught in my throat; I started to sob.
It is one thing to know that you are blessed, but to suddenly feel within every inch of your body that you are blessed when you haven’t always felt it can be an overwhelming shock.
When I was 11 years old, my mum’s muscular dystrophy confined her to bed. Life became hard as she struggled to accept her deteriorating condition and regularly took her pain and frustration out on me.
I thought God, the Divine Spirit of this world, had abandoned me as punishment because somehow I was bad, because I never did anything right. The abandonment was as deeply painful as my mum’s cutting words.
Five years ago, I left my job and packed up my life to follow my heart out into the world. I loved scuba diving and the sea called to me, so I swapped the office for a year in the jungle and the sea.
Slowly, I started to rediscover God: in the sunsets I watched religiously; in the sea that I was privileged to swim and scuba dive; in the ever-changing sky; and in the unique silence and presence of the jungle and woodlands.
God was in the essence of beauty, and as I witnessed that beauty, I experienced God in me — my own divinity.
This reconnecting with God, this remembering of my own sacredness triggered instant and enormous grief at having forgotten the connection in the first place.
And so I walked through those mountains, alone but with God, and over and over I kept trying to sing the words, “I am blessed” and allow them to feel at home in my body. And I cried and I sobbed until finally, with a smile on my face and joy in my heart, I could sing,
“I am blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed to be a witness.”
*****
Kym Wilson is a writer and coach. Her mission is to help you to discover your inner compass and courageousness to step through the fear that holds you back from living your dreams and walking your unique path out into the world. Last year she walked the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury in England to Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, a journey of over 2,000 kilometres of which she walked 75 days alone. She will soon release her book about her journey and is planning her next pilgrimage walking from Rome to Jerusalem in 2015. She writes about wander, wonder, and wayfinding over at www.kymwilson.com.au.
{Count Your Blessings, Not Your Troubles}
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