At the Corner of My Past and My Heart

“Stillness reveals what hurry hides.” — Pico Iyer

How do I know if I can trust myself?

Should I say yes?

Can I say no?

For much of my life, I struggled between a deep knowing and confusion.

Everything around me seemed to be telling me who I should be and how I should live. I looked outside myself for guidance, affirmation, and reassurance that I was doing life “right.”

My deep knowing was that God is love and that I loved God with my whole heart.

The confusion came with all the rules and conditions that seemed necessary to keep God’s love.

Through my own interpretation of the world around me, I learned that acceptance came from doing things the “right” way. If something felt natural to me but didn’t fit the expectations around me, I often assumed there was something wrong with me. I believed it was my sinful nature.

Yet underneath all of it, my knowing was gently glowing in my heart. Some signals were clear. Others were obscured.

So many things didn’t make sense to me. I had the inside view of church people and discovered they were as good and as flawed as everyone else. I experienced love that felt deeply true to me, yet believed it couldn’t possibly be right. I searched for the person God supposedly had prepared for me, not realizing that I could trust my own heart.

I spent years looking for someone else to confirm what was true. I had become so accustomed to looking outside myself that I no longer trusted my own knowing.

In my late twenties, I found myself standing at a crossroads.

The life I thought I was supposed to want was presenting itself. Marriage. Stability. Adulthood. Everyone around me seemed to be moving into that next chapter, and I felt pressure to do the same.

Looking back, I can see that I knew more than I allowed myself to know. The signs were there all along. My heart was speaking. I just didn’t trust myself enough to listen.

So I moved forward with the life I thought I was supposed to live.

Then I waited.

I waited for happiness to arrive. I waited for the plan to make sense. I waited for the life I had chosen to eventually feel like home.

Years passed.

I loved my children deeply, served in my church and community, and honored my commitments. Yet somewhere along the way, I lost touch with the best of myself. As many mothers have said before me, I felt like I had lost myself.

What I didn’t know then was that finding myself was not about searching.

It was about remembering.

The best of me never left. The layers of my life experiences wrapped around my inner light like cotton candy on a paper cone. Remembering wasn’t about creating something new. It was about uncovering what had always been there.

One of the greatest gifts of my awakening came through a simple realization:

“It’s all made up.”

The confusion disappeared. Poof.

Not because I suddenly had all the answers, but because I understood that I had been living inside a story I inherited. A story that made sense to some people, but no longer made sense to me.

I realized I could listen to my own heart, trust my own experience, and create a life that felt true.

Today, when I want to know which way to go, I become still. I tune into my body. I listen. Sometimes the answer comes quickly. Sometimes it takes longer.

When I am uncertain, I sit at what I call the corner of my past and my heart.

My past brings knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. My heart brings loving awareness and compassionate curiosity. At the corner, they meet. The wisdom of my experience joins the knowing of my heart.

It may be a thirty-minute sit. It may be thirty seconds. Sometimes it takes only three.

I know when I know.

My heart and intuition are always waiting for me at the corner.

I simply had to remember where to find them.