Eat. Pray. Love.

I loved the book Eat Pray Love. I loved it before I read it because my beloved yoga teachers, Michelle and Madelaine, said it was a beautiful book. And they were right. I read the book during my trip to China last March.
As I read the book, I kept comparing her story to mine. Being the neurotic girl that I am, I judged her soul-searching experience as better than mine. But it was on my trip to China, when I realized that the world was a lot bigger than this Wichita Falls-girl ever imagined, I gave myself permission to be me and to let my experience be the healing experience that was for my highest good. (If only I had written a memoir of the last 5 years...then maybe I would have that best-seller too!)
I love the book even more after watching Jennifer Gilbert on Oprah today. She said something very wise: you don't have to go across the world to find yourself and to find God...you can do this wherever you are if you are willing to sit still, ask the deeper questions, and seek peace. It just seems like this is the path every human being needs to take...to sit still, ask deeper questions and seek peace. It's a noisy world that prefers we stay on the surface and seeks to chip away our contentment and replace it with feelings that we are less than.
Here's to embracing a different way of life, and, as my dear friend Margaret Ann taught me, here's to being, "AS IS."