Now You Get To Lie In It

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“You made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”  As a linguistics/semantics geek, and a lover of language in general, I love how words form ideas, paint pictures, change minds and change lives.  I love how the tiniest shift in the phrasing of something can cause a massive shift in perspective. Instead of, “…now you have to lie in it,” what if the saying was, “…now you get to lie in it”?

I love the feeling of climbing into bed for the first time after changing the sheets.  Everything is crisp, clean, and straight. I love watching the clean sheets float gently down as I fling them out over the bed.  I love tucking, patting, straightening.  Hospital corners (or not!), fluffed pillows, the fresh scent – the entire experience makes me sigh in gratitude and contentment.

Living on purpose does not mean planning every minute or moment of the day. Living on purpose means living with intention. It means moving one step forward and trusting that the next step will reveal itself with patience, persistence and faith.

Life is not crisp and clean. It’s not neatly tucked corners and beautifully fluffed pillows.  Life is messy, like the day after I’ve crawled out of that well-made bed, sheets rumpled and askew from an active night dreaming.  The value is in intention. There is value in knowing where you’re going and why, even when the path to get there is full of wrinkles. There is value in starting with intention. There is value in simply starting.