I Watch the Candle Burn

“A candle loses nothing, by lighting another candle.”

Anonymous

This morning…the rain falls. Lightning and thunder, an anomaly for this time of year, rage outside of my window. The wind howls.
A candle is lit beside me. I am mesmerized by it…the infinite number of shapes the flame takes within the glass.

Something quite marvelous is afoot.

I’m waking each morning with a delicious kind of anticipation…eyes wide open, wondering, seeking, yearning. I’m opening emails with a new kind of vigor. I’m peering into each moment with an expectation to find something new, revealing and different. I’m questioning, wondering and pondering the message tucked away inside each exchange, glance and thought.

I am reminded of Madeline. I rarely walk laps with the girls, but several seasons ago, my assistant coach took the helm and I walked several laps with a group of girls. At some point during the hour, Madeline and I ended up alone.
We walked together—my friend, Madeline, and me. Our hands clasped and our stride in sync. After a minute or two, I asked… “Madeline, how is it that you and I ended up together? What happened so that you and I have been given the chance to know each other? How does all of that work? What is that all about really?"

Madeline thought for several seconds—small puffs of air exiting her mouth with each step.

And then she spoke—with the assurance of someone who has absolutely NO doubt about the words to follow. “Well it’s like this,” she said. “God has an idea. But He has a problem because he somehow needs to get that idea down to earth. So what He does is...He wraps a body around the idea, and then sends it here to be born. If the idea is a really big one, He wraps two or three or lots of bodies around the idea, so that the really big idea can get here.

And that is, of course Molly, how we get our gifts and our talents. They are God’s tools to help us get the really big idea out of our bodies and onto earth before our bodies die.”

I took her hand, slowed our walk to a stroll and knew that this would be a moment I would never forget. That if there was a Divine—a Higher Power—God or something greater than all of us out there, or in there—He, She, It—was right there in the words of that small girl-child.

I consider the words of Madeline now as I sit in this peaceful space.

The candle beside me, burns, flickers and pulls me in. I watch the flame as it breaths in the oxygen around it…changing, morphing, dancing, burning away the wax to reveal new wick. I feel as if I am this candle, burning and breathing in the life around me, tasting each delicious new experience...wondering what each will bring to the sometimes frightening process of melting away what I have known and what is comfortable, to what I will know and that will challenge me. To, in this glorious process, reveal THE idea…the big, beautiful and bold idea around which this body is wrapped. To manifest--in a million pieces of light—my, your, our greatest human potential.

I watch the candle burn and delight in its radiance.

What elements of who you are, have been revealed thanks to the love, tenderness and gentle push from those around you? Who were and are those people who elevate you to your potential?

Let me know at molly@girlsontherun.org.