Seeing the Light within the darkness seems for many of us to be an impossible venture or a frightening experience. Or both. But the truth is, it requires only two things: choice and courage. Choice implies you believe the Light is there for you. Even if you hold only a tiny fragment of belief. That’s all that’s needed. And second, courage assures you go forward despite your fear. 

For years, I’d refused to listen to my deeper knowing, to that subtle calling from within. Walking through such a doorway into an unknown field of awareness seemed both impossible and terrifying. I vividly remember the day, long ago, when I made the decision to step forward despite fear. In looking back, what I did was rather surreal. I didn’t think about what to do or why. I just followed the call of my body and my distress. And acted without thinking it through.

I went to the front door of my house and opened and slammed the door shut about one hundred times, shouting over and over “No! I will not! No! No! No! I will not!” I tore the door off the hinges and the frame. It was destroyed. 

And then, in exhaustion,  I fell to the floor in grief and tears, surrendering to an awareness of a Universal Love, or God that was witnessing my refusal and pain, gently waiting underneath the uproar and chaos of my refusal. Holding me in enduring gentleness and love. In that moment, I experienced the Garden of Grace—a place within me where Love and Light reside despite the shadows of darkness. A place where Love touches my most wounded parts.

Quietly in the ruins of my refusal, flowing within my tears, I realized I have always been part of this Universal Loving Presence. My sense of separation from this love was an illusion created by fear, a fear of my own making. As I surrendered in that moment, I knew the doorway into the Light of Grace was within my own breathing heart, wrapped and disguised as darkness. All along waiting for me to say yes.

Before this experience, I held the belief I was separate and walking alone through life. And that I had to work and work to prove my worth to be included in any minimal presence of God, Universal Love, Grace, or whatever we wish to call it. Many of us humans feel this way.

I always wanted some sort of invitation into that Garden of Grace to tell me I belonged. For example, if a note was left on my kitchen table, I wouldn’t be able to deny it. But nothing ever happens that way. Instead, my awareness that I was included, not separate, from the Garden of Grace happened on that one summer day after destroying my own front door. And it came through my choice and courage to see it, to surrender to my grief and open my heart, in the present moment.

We humans don’t get engraved invitations to enter into what I’m calling the Garden of Grace. Most of us however, know quite well the terrain in the garden of our own personal nightmarish hell. I surely did. More than likely many of us have tried our very best to run from our fears and angers, as I did the day I tore the door off my house. It seems we humans try, in every conceivable way we can imagine, to drag ourselves into some form of Garden of Grace, even if only a fake one. Some of us try to buy our way in—working for ways to prove our self-worth, in any way we can, all to no avail. We focus on outward goals and miss the mark within our very own beating heart.

I would have loved to receive this invitation in writing as I entered the Gardens so many years before, but I didn’t. At the time, I didn’t even know I had entered any Gardens. And I didn’t know I’d been there before. I’ve been told there is something about the struggle itself that produces growth. Nature has examples of this wisdom. When butterflies are emerging from their cocoons, they must struggle to free themselves. If they receive help from some kind human, that human must watch in horror as the butterfly dies from lack of struggle.

It was a long time after that before I realized I’d already received numerous invitations. All denied or unseen by me. The Garden of Grace had been there the entire time, all of my life, waiting just for me. And oddly, I had been there before but denied it as such. Grace comes in many packages, most of them disguised as something else, but all calling us home. Every single one of us. Not one of us is left out. We all belong.

What I’d like you to know is that the Garden of Grace is real. It is here. It is now. It is for each of us. No one is excluded. But it is an individual inward journey of choice. And it does take grit.