Wrestling With Angels - The Second Act

There are times when life demands that we change - profoundly change. Moments that demand of us the courage to face our failures, our fears, our betrayals. Moments when we can see the vision on the horizon that beckons us with an inner longing to journey forward and yet paralyzes us with a profound dread as we realize that all that has brought us to this place is insufficient to move us into our destiny.

It may be the reality of crossing the threshold from mid-life into our Senior years, it may be the milestone of having to deal with the loss of a spouse or the horror of losing a child, it may be the triumph of having survived cancer, it may be the brutal adjustment of divorce or the hopeful anticipation of re-marriage.   This is not the milestone of the young, filled with the optimistic idealism of youth.  This is the milestone for those of us who have already lived a great deal of our lives, who have a history to look back on and come to grips with, for those of us who have experienced both the triumphs and the tragedies of life and who want to move into the next part of our journey somehow changed and prepared to build a future that transcends the mistakes and shortcomings of our past.

This is the second act.  The place where the stage has been set, the conflict has been revealed and we move forward into the hopeful resolution.  It is a place where we must wrestle with angels in order to see the face of God.  It is the place where, if we refuse to let go; we will leave with a blessing and yet we will walk with a limp, for dust can not look on the face of divinity without being forever marked by it. 

This is perhaps, the most difficult place to be in. That place where we know we must relinquish what has brought us to this point in order to move beyond it into the place that the Spirit is calling us to.  It is these places where, like Jacob, we need to see the face of God, for what is required is more transformation than change.  It is a place where our souls are marked with the fingerprint of the transcendent and we exchange the name our past has given us for the name our future destiny demands.  It is these places where we must face the terrifying beauty of the divine, and refuse to let go until we have received our blessing.  It is these places where our broken humanity wrestles with the angelic. 

If life finds you at one of these places, that Jacob called "Penial" "for I have seen God face to face and my life is preseved," may you be encouraged to refuse to let go until you have received your blessing. May you have the courage to come face to face with the terrifying truth and be set free to move forward into a future filled with promise, grace and magnificent wonder.  May you begin the "Second Act" from a place of transcendent transformation that has wrought beauty from ashes, turned your mourning into dancing and with face to the horizon, may you move forward into your unique destiny.