Soul Mates

I may have mentioned that I am reading "Eat. Pray. Love." for a second time.

Oh, how I love this book.

I love how Liz writes.

And, the focuses of her trip to the three I's have so much meaning in our lives.

Yesterday, I was reading about India.

She is living in the Ashram and she is working and meditating for hours on end.

Richard from Texas, who I seriously need to meet one day, is talking to her (or, rather listening to her) as she is obsessing over David... the man she fell in love with while going through her ugly, drawn-out divorce.

Richard from Texas is teaching her about soul mates.

And, Lawd, can Richard teach us a thing or two about soul mates.

Now, anytime I am reading about anything that Richard from Texas says, I totally hear him speaking with a heavy southern drawl, deep voice, with a big country-boy smile on his face.

Just amuse me as I type what he says about soul mates and hear his gravely-long southern drawl...

Soul Mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. His purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over.

Well, if that ain't the truth Richard from Texas.

If that ain't the truth.

Richard from Texas goes on:

I'm going to insert my name into this because I can hear Richard from Texas talking directly to me:

...and Heidi is scared to death of what will happen if she's really alone. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you're using right now to obsess about this guy, you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot - a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in - God will rush in - and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using guys to block the door. Let it go.

So, here's the interesting part of this...

I read this last July... about a month after I had started treatment.

These very paragraphs are highlighted and the edges of the pages are bent in to alert me to GREATNESS within those chapters.

However, the way I read these words over a year ago and the way I am reading them today are SO different.

See, today I read them as a "Holla, Richard from Texas! Amen and Hallelujah my Texas Man! Let's say grace and grill up some ribs, Richard from Texas!"

Last year, I was asking OUT LOUD how to do this.

How do I open up that space that has been so overtaken by addiction to allow a doorway for God to come in...

To allow love to swarm into that open door and wrap me in all the goodness...

To find who I am and what I am capable of.

Richard from Texas is SO right!

I seriously need to find him and sip some whip cream with hot cocoa with that man...

Until then...

Listen to that wisdom

Believe it.

Be really alone.

It's not as bad as I thought.

And, when you stop obsessing about validation from others and needing it from men especially for whatever reason...

That vacuum will create the most amazingly big suction of love to envelope your whole world.

And, the best part...

That love comes from your dang self!