GIVE ME A SIGN!!! TUMBLEWEEDS???

By: Rev. Gillian V Harris, M.S.P.
January 4, 2018

For many, there will come a time when they transition from one career into another. Sometimes anticipating this move can be overwhelming and confusing. I encountered the same conundrum. The idea of changing careers brought butterflies but I couldn’t figure out if they were happy butterflies or panicked ones!

I’d heard that you could talk to Spirit, the creator of all Life and ask that you be given a definitive answer about what to do. Yes or no. Go or stay. So I decided to give this a try myself. In prayer I said “do I sell my company? Or do I keep it. If I keep it, how can I experience it with less stress, with more grace and ease? If I sell it how do I go about making my new venture an easy success. Thank you in advance for giving me this answer within 3 days! I will be looking out!”

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I was driving down the 101 freeway – or…trying to! Traffic was thick and slow when all of a sudden through the bushes on my right I see, five or six tumbleweeds getting FORCED onto the freeway RIGHT in front of my car! I was going slow enough to experience this whole thing. I saw them seemingly resist and finally burst through the bushes and fly onto the freeway and a few lanes! I felt bad for the life of those tumbleweeds on het 101! And the whole thing was so weird. My memory is stuck on their motion before bursting through the bushes! They were fighting it – like they KNEW the freeway was a bad place to be! LoL! They were resisting and there was force stronger that pushed them. And the ‘them’ part! I’ve never seen so many tumble weeds at one time!! Ever!

I happened to be on the phone with my friend and fellow author Denecia, at the time. I had interrupted our conversation to say, “Oh My GOD these – these – these tumble weeds just exploded onto the freeway…” She immediately was like, “I wonder what that means! Let’s look it up!” –I had NOT thought of that. She tried to look up some stuff online but she couldn't really find anything except freedom... I think she was also seeing words she didn’t want to say to me like, “desolate, dry, lonely” Lol! Thank you Wikipedia!

hadn’t considered these tumble weeds to be a sign until she brought up the symbolic angle! I told her about my talk with God and the sign I was looking for within three days and this just happened to have been the third day!

So I thought out loud. At first I noted the freedom of the tumbleweed. No responsibilities except to go whichever way the wind blows. I love the wind and I wanted the freedom that a tumbleweed appears to live. The life of a tumbleweed is very free-spirited... But then I got to thinking about it. A tumbleweed is something that used to be alive! Alive, green and probably productive in ways we don’t know unless we watch national geographic or something! And now it's dead! So dead it’s lost its hold on its foundation. Uprooted from what was its home… And now it is just aimlessly floundering around! Wherever the wind moves it!? With no mind of its own? Oh no…. All of a sudden the life of a tumbleweed was less attractive.

I wanted a directional answer. “Now I’m seeing the tumbleweed as something that used to be lalive – life sucked out of it – aimless – lonely. Mercy. I don’t want that to happen. Some of the life has already been sucked out of me I think I have my answer. I want to stay green! I want to re-green! Like how Stella got her groove back, I want to get my green back. My authentic state of green aliveness – I want to settle back into that! I need to lean into what gives me that aliveness”. Denecia was like “yeahhhh”

I continued my drive and may have stopped for a couple errands on the way home. I really don’t remember but I know it felt like a few hours had elapsed from the attack of the freeway tumbleweeds in broad daylight to the darkness of night as I finally made it to my street. As I approach my house in the middle of the block RIGHT in front of my driveway…is a tumbleweed! And it's not like there are a bunch of those tumbleweeds around it was only that one ….in front of MY driveway! It was clearly like Spirit was saying this is an affirmation that within the tumbleweed is my answer. My experience as an entrepreneur has been more grueling than anything, partly due to the nature of the business it is. None the less it has deadened some of my spirit. In conversation with my mom she pointed reminded me of the spark which is pure life force energy that is still alive in the very, very center of me. My eternal soul/God connection. Unlike a tumbleweed, I’m not dead-dead-dead! I can come back before that completely happens.....

It’s been a few weeks since that happened and I now realize that in my process I have to hold tight to non-judgment. I judged the tumbleweed as so bad, I didn’t want to acknowledge my similar characteristics! I didn’t want to embrace the fact that there are parts of me that have dried up and died as a result of my over-work and over-focus on the company. The sacrifice of family time, romance time, self-time has traumatized me. Lived, learned and now I have healing to do. I am going to be gentle with myself as I relearn simple things like, how to relax. How to be social. How to chit chat about nothing critical! How to …lose track of time.

Plugging away in two worlds at once; keeping the original company productive and healthy while creating my new career is the way a tumbleweed would handle it. Burning my wick at both ends, as they say, is also something a tumbleweed does! I’ve learned that a tumbleweed is green for a while probably while its’ making seeds n stuff. But then it is designed to dry out and be uprooted by the wind. Like this is a plan of nature that heat help the plant to its death and that it completely uproots itself and goes rolling…eternally! Here’s the thing; while it’s rolling along, it’s dropping seeds that are going to make new tumbleweeds. And if it stops and settles in a moist spot of dirt, that gestation is going to happen quickly and whole heartedly! A tumbleweed is a diaspore; a plant dispersal unit. It is designed to lay seeds and propagate life while it rolls around!

So with that I am getting an understanding that for right now, I am a tumbleweed and its okay. It happened. Didn’t really want it to happen this way but it has and here I am…not in control of my schedule, not in control of where I am, as the original company dictates that in alignment with my intention to keep the company in profit and success realm. But while that is happening… while it knocks me around I’m finding places to drop my seeds! Seeds of effort, energy and focus on my new end goal. Feels like the answer is to continue doing both for a while and that it’s supposed to be this way. I am where I am supposed to be. Also, my efforts toward my new goal are with purpose. The launch of my new business is a process. Its growth and success will require nurturing and time… Just like the seeds that will become a new, green tumbleweed ready to dry out again, uproot and travel. I’m on a roll!

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