Raising an Army

Listen to the audio here: https://venture-within.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Raising-an-Army.m4a

If I were to tell you, you had the strength to raise an army, would you believe me?

Would you allow others to willingly rally for your cause, and lift you high?

Would you allow this protective movement of soldiers to barrel towards you, and feel the love ribboning through?

And could you then, connect with the deeper meaning behind this rising and recognize your own strength beating at its heart?

Found in the strength that others freely give us, in that breath-taking moment when we realize we are worth rallying for, maybe then we can believe in the strength we always hold inside ourselves.

Let me cut to the point without being too pointed: Someone I love and care about very deeply has found themselves in a one-two, one-two stance with cancer.

It feels uneasy thinking about what they’re enduring as a threatening war that has been waged. But the words “fight”, “persevere” and “battle” and even the title of this post lends itself to acknowledging the legions on their side lining up before them.

So . . . there must be an undeniable fight on their hands.

Part of me feels this battle is comfortingly common. Like so many others, or even ourselves, these front lines we find ourselves on is familiar. Cancer is a known-of enemy.

This person is a fighter and has been all their life. Fighting solo for security, peace, and calm.

So much of a solo fighter, it was their noble “I can handle this” attitude, carrying out life’s obligations every single day that may have led them to this painful space in the first place: the taking on of things. The soldiering ahead without much rest, or without much help.

It can be so difficult for us to accept a helping hand every once in a damn while.

But this revelation of a foreign invader in their body changes things.

My loved one, the biting, stubborn, hurt, injured, double-fisted fighter they are, leaning into no one for decades, is now suddenly standing in the stark, glaring light of an intense new reality, needing to relax those palms a bit.