The following are excepts from the book Will You Dance? by Annette Childs:

“The first to enter was Change.  With her she brought a gust of wind that swept away all of the familiar things we had known in our world. . . We watched helplessly as the life we had known dissipated like a tiny stream of smoke which rises from a candle, whose flame has been extinguished. . .

We stood in quiet consternation, watching life as we had known it rise in that smoke, growing more diffuse, until it finally disappeared altogether.

Next to enter were Fear and Loss.  They moved as one, and entered arm in arm.  And with them came a strange silence. . .a silence that was born out fo the inability to hear anything but the truth. . .

The truth moved through us like a ripple moving through a placid lake. . . concentric rings pushing out from the center expanding until finally merging back into the vastness from which they came. . .

We felt our knees buckle a bit, as the waves of truth rocked us gently from side to side. . .

It was very, very quiet for a long while.  We were held in rapt attention of all that was unfolding around us.  We watched, with wide eyed wonder, as truth rushed in like a wave, filling up all of the fractures that the winds of Change had laid bare.

If time moved at all, it could have been minutes or years as we were tossed on the stormy seas of Change, Fear, and Loss.”

And later:
“. . .and so it was that we came to know that breaking was the gift of Change.  For to become whole, we first must be broken into pieces.  It is only when we lay scattered in fragments that the light can make its way through us.”

And yet later in the book:
“Realization swept across us, like sea spray hitting warm summer skin.  And we knew from a place deep within us that to dance with one was to dance with all.

And we knew with quiet certainty that to forego the dance and sit down in silence was merely to site in the shelter of a tomb which houses a life never fully lived. . . “

Category: Getting There