How the Lotus Flower Trains for Life -

I’ve begun to write so many drafts in the past two weeks.

But, sometimes, I feel like the Lord just lifts writing blocks, so tonight I felt the urge to really push down on the keys a bit harder. Do you ever just get this sudden burst of clarity? Yes, I went to yoga this week, and Anne Bertolet called me a young lotus. So there’s that. But, this post revolves around the changes and shifting of my day-to-day life to something new. It’s in my mind revolving the feeling of a new adventure and task to accomplish. And then, I just realized whatever it is that the Lord is going to call me to accomplish, I am currently very ill-prepared.

In eventing, the equestrian sport which explodes on my social media pages, conditioning for the phase of cross-country is very essential as your horse progresses up the levels. You plan months in advance a specific workout schedule to build up strength and stamina so that the horse peaks at a certain time. After the peak, you allow your horse to have a break to let down. Then you start over because it’s not healthy for them to stay at maximum fitness all the time. When you start back, you begin again with every slow work-outs but in the next build-up your horse comes up stronger and builds strength more easily than the last portion.

Through college I was training. Training my thoughts, training myself as a rider, and learning ins and outs of how to build a relationship. While this training was similar to the training of your 6yo for their first Training Level, not the Kentucky 4**** event, it was still training. I reached this peak upon graduation and taking a new job and moving across the country.

huckle and i lemonade — Look, Huckle and I had a “basic” morning with lemonade and walks!

Everything had been put in place so that during that time I could suddenly grasp that I am an adult, an adult with real bills, and learned that people around me are affected by my decisions. Read my last 15 blogs to see what I learned.

So then you “let down.” Like, after this pivotal transition you need to just resonate and be. (I want to say like the lotus blossoming out of the murky swamp, pure and unblemished. That is what my yoga instructor told me this week. So now, I just keep reminding myself I am a lotus… It makes me laugh. I don’t like swamps.)

Somehow though, I just haven’t actually gotten back into training for the next level. Preliminary level comes after Training. It kind of separates horses that have it and that don’t. For me, I’m supposed to be running Prelim (metaphorically) in the next few weeks, and suddenly I don’t have any training program in place!

So, now I’m pulling together my resources. Pulling up those Bibles passages about searching for the Lord, finding myself in prayer, and tuning into my “Christian Contemporary” Pandora station. Because, shit, I have a tidal wave of things to do and an adventure of life ahead of me!

By now, if you’re still reading, you may be thinking, “Claire, what the hell are you talking about?” Maybe it’s the analytical portion of my brain or common sense, but if I’m called to go on an adventure, I have to be prepared if I’m to be successful, correct?

I have to get my tail in gear, to train for the next part of my life! I don’t want to wake up and find I never made it past Training level.