“Your nakedness is medicine.  My medicine.” Is that what I heard her say? Did I really write all that? Naked. That’s for sure… But, if I don’t lay my heart on the line, who will? If I don’t create space for vulnerability and deep connection, who will? If I don’t shed layer after layer of pretty – socially acceptable – nice – who will? These are mine to do. And, though it scares me to death, knowing what’s mine to do is the force that drives me, the fire in my belly, that hunger of my soul that will not be denied.

I have heard the call…the knock at the door still ringing in my ears. The knock at the door that caused a tremor in my being, an instant fear that froze me where-I-stood.  I have heard the knock at the door… that I can no longer deny. Once the knock is heard, there are only two choices. The knock is like a fork in the road. I either answer or I stay very still, very quiet, and pretend I’m not home. Held captive, immobilized by fear, I’m left continually wondering if the call is waiting on the other side of my door, waiting for some sign of life, waiting for some reason to keep knocking.

Fear is there. That part is given. Do I turn toward it, offering my most fierce compassion? Or am I held captive? I have heard the knock at the door and, my friend, I answered. What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have expected, is that by turning toward the fear a seed of courage took sprout. That tiny sprout laid its roots deeply in my heart and there it still grows with wild abandon, giving my heart more reach than it has ever known, pushing past self-constructed walls, breaking through real and imagined barriers.

Courage grows rampantly, first creating one small crack, then another and another until an opening – like a beam of light through a break in the clouds – is made. As if my heart were a substance governed by the same laws that govern gases, it expands to fill the container, the container that now is no container at all. Where once I feared expanding into oblivion, now I dance those streets in ecstasy.

I heard the knock at the door, and I answered…