Finding and Trusting the Truth on a Snowy Walk

I returned to my life-long friend the lake this weekend, and finally found winter. My husband and I took my daughter to Lake Tahoe to celebrate his birthday and play in the snow.

I know the snow is a way of life for some of my readers, and far from being special, it’s more of a pain. However for this California family, it’s a novelty, and something to be treasured and revered. Years go by that we don’t get to play in any of the beautiful white stuff. So this weekend, we got to sled, build a snowman, and hike back through a snowy meadow to a quiet forest by yet another crystal-clear lake.

Walking through the meadow, making tracks on the smooth canvas, I heard the joyful noise of crunching through layers of snow. And I felt the sensation of my footsteps sinking until they found snowpack that would bear my weight. This sensation is different than any other kind one feels while walking. The temporary sinking until your foot finds ground to support it. Logically, you know you’ll find the ground, but part of you says, “what if there’s a big hole I’m stepping into, and I continue to sink?”

I found a rhythm, my sink-walking making a muffled crunch with each step. The word “Trust” came to me. Making new tracks through fresh powdered snow, sinking, stepping, crunching. Trusting I will find the ground and the path forward over the surface of sparkly white.

This walking was meditative, and tiring in a good way. Each step was deliberate. A deliberate pattern of sinking, trusting, finding support enough to take the next step.

I brought Jennifer Pastiloff’s book, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard, with me on our trip and I thought about her words. She talks a lot about our Inner Asshole (she swears a lot too), that voice inside that tells us lies to keep us small and stuck. She abbreviates the term to IA throughout the book, and I’ve always referred to it as my inner critic. Whatever you call it, I know you know and have it too.

In my drinking days, my IA had center stage, telling me all sorts of things that I largely believed because I had no sense of self. Yes, I am a loser who puts getting buzzed before spending time with my kids. Yes, I am that person who phones it in at work. I’m fat. I’m uninteresting. I don’t have any talents or special abilities. I’ll probably just go home and end up drinking all evening, again. The tape played on repeat inside my head.

My inner critic became much quieter when I stopped drinking. The journey I set out on, the one where I respected myself and starting caring about what I said, did, and put in my body, took away a lot of its power. Now that I was no longer my own worst enemy, I started to catch the whisperings of another voice: the voice of truth.

I believe the voice of truth also lives in each of us and was put in our hearts by our creator. The problem is, living in this world, with all its noise and pain and ugliness, drowns it out. Therefore, it is hard to hear, let alone believe and respond to the voice of truth inside us, because our inner critic usually has free reign inside our heads.

To hear the voice of truth, one must get quiet and still. My voice is best heard in the early morning, before anyone else stirs. I reach it through silence and prayer, and I hear it through reflection and meditation. It is the still, small voice, that only speaks when one is listening intently and with intention. Many days, I am not disciplined enough to wait, and seek, and hear. But when I do, I am richly rewarded.

Both voices will always be there, and I speak from experience when I say it’s always easier to hear, and buy the lie. Even today, despite my progress and the fact I no longer harm myself or disrespect my body, my inner critic is alive and well. Telling me I’m not good enough, or brave enough, or strong enough. Telling me I don’t need anyone and that I can do it on my own. It likes to keep me small, and disconnected. It likes it when I play it safe. When I identify with the roles society has given me; when I dwell within the box that was cut out for me by the world.

But the voice of truth tells me something much different. When I get there, and I sit there, and I soak it all in, this is what happens: I hear that I am worthy, that I am unique and that I am loved and capable of giving so much love in return. I hear that I am un-boxable, and that nothing can contain my potential and my power to be a light. That there never was, nor will there ever be, a light that is my exact shade of brightness.

Crunching, sinking, and trusting in the snow on this sunny winter day reminds me to be careful of which voice I listen to. To be conscious of which voice is leading me forward, and which one is trying to hold me back. And to remember I always have a choice when it comes to which one I honor: the lie, or the truth.

It is so easy to go along with the well-worn lie, tarnished and bruised from years of telling and use. Like the folklore of childhood, the boogeyman or the monster in the closet…so familiar, it’s comforting. It’s easier to deal with the certainty of the misery we know than to step out into the unknown that could be our saving grace.

But the work, and the reward, of unearthing the truth and following the path it illuminates, is when we finally start living. It is unfamiliar and the way is unclear at times, but we are never misled, or disappointed by truth. Even though it’s difficult, and not many choose it, the pursuit of our individual truth is our destiny and our purpose.

So I invite you to make a path through the unmarked snow and to trust that you will be supported. To turn down the lies and tune into your inner truth.

To get quiet, be still and listen intently… I think you will love what you hear.