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I woke in a very dark, sad head space. The personal revelations of the last few days, working issues from my childhood, had left me almost in despair. So, I came to my office, but not to work. I raised my circle, lit my candles, called to Deity and put myself in sacred space. It helped some, but not really. I made tea, I tried to meditate, but my mood was not calm enough. I drew some runes and my gloom interrupted them badly, darkly. Then I heard crows calling. I knew that call, it meant they’d found a hawk or owl nearby and were trying to drive it away. The sound of their cawing made me glance up and over and I saw three large birds. I thought three crows, but they were big crows. The bright morning light washed them all to a golden sheen of circling, spinning shapes against the almost white blue of the sky. Then one of the crows turned and flashed it’s white belly to the light, and the two remaining crows swirled after that flash of white and I knew it was two crows and one hawk. I’d found the source of the noise.

I grabbed binoculars which I keep close at hand, because with birds you need better eyes. But the three large birds were moving too fast, wheeling and diving, around each other. There was no time to find any one shape and focus the mechanics of the binoculars. I actually said aloud, “Stop messing with it and just watch.” If I hadn’t stopped messing with the technology that was supposed to give me a better view I would have missed it all. Sometimes you see as much as you’re supposed to, and sometimes it’s not as much as you want, or as close and clear as you’d like, but it’s what you need to see.

I stood there watching the hawk flash and dive in the light, I got more glimpses of that snow white belly and then two black wing bars and then the crows chased it off. I listened to their cawing grow distant as they perused the hawk into the light.

I can’t tell you why this event cleared my head, made me smile, and lifted some burden of darkness that had held heavy on my heart, but it did. I can tell you that the crows were very big and if I didn’t know we don’t have ravens here that’s what I would have called them. I can tell you that my religion sees ravens as very significant. Hugin and Mugin, Thought and Memory, Odin’s ravens are important symbols to me. I’ve had ravens show up at important moments before and act as a warning that I have heeded to my benefit. But today they showed up to remind me of something I’d missed, or forgotten. I’d been fighting ghosts from my childhood, specifically some of the negative words that my grandmother raised me with, she was one of the most unhappy people I’ve ever met. She could take a beautiful day and be so convinced it would rain that she couldn’t enjoy the sunshine for fear it would go away. She was like that about the people she loved, too. So fearful she’d lose that love that she tormented herself with the thought of the loss, so that her love was grasping, covetous, and in the end gave her no joy, for her fear of loss stole her happiness from her, even when nothing was wrong. She could not let go her fear enough to embrace the joy she’d had. This habit made a self-fulling prophecy sometimes. I know it is one of the things that drove me to marry early, and move states away. Her love was too great a burden. Her fear too much to bear. I cannot imagine how crushing it must have been for her to live inside those fears and that amazing need to be loved and reassured, but her own fears made no love enough, no reassurance good enough to quiet her terror of losing the people she loved.

I didn’t think I did that. I thought therapy and meditation and my path of faith had made me a more positive person, and it has, but it’s hard to shake all your childhood. Every time you think you’ve made lemonade out of the dark brew, you find something bitter and nasty at the bottom of your bright, sunny glass. I found one of those bits today, and realized that I was stealing my happiness from myself, not because anything had gone wrong, but because something might go wrong. Gods, I thought I’d given up that nonproductive habit, but apparently under enough stress it’s still in me. Somewhere in watching the hawk and crows circle and dive, flashing so bright in the light, I found that bit of hard, joyless, fear, and I went back to sit before my altar and I was able to let it go. Thank you, God and Goddess.

I will take joy in what I have right now. I will not worry about the loss of that joy. I will let my heart feel everything it’s supposed to feel, and I will not put barriers between me and potential loss so that I protect my heart. A heart is not meant for protection, though that is wise, sometimes it is foolishness that is needed. The foolishness of hope, trust, faith, of giving yourself over to your happiness while you have it, and not poking at it with a stick to see if that happiness is real enough, solid enough. See, I don’t do exactly what my grandmother did, and that’s how this bit of negativity hid inside me so long, because it was my version of it. If happiness is not logical, not dependable, then I poke at it, I have to understand it, analyze it, but somethings in life are not quantifiable by tests and measures. Happiness, that uplift of spirits, is one of those measureless things. You can’t hold it in your hand, you can’t pour it into a test tube, but you can feel it. You can feel it as you smile, and something hard, and unpleasant that was tight around your heart let’s go, and you feel lighter.

I will be brave, and I will enjoy the people and events around me until they, themselves, make it impossible. I will not back down first. I will not give up first. I will let myself feel all the joy that there is to this feeling and if it goes badly later, then it does, but for right now I will embrace the good, and not let the possibility of rain take one shiny drop away from the sunshine.