The Time My World Stood Still

Everyone has one of those years that we wish never happened. But once enough time has passed and the wounds have been healed, we can finally see the blessings, and that is where this story begins.

I have had one of those years many times, but the one that changed my life was in 2019. The last year before COVID, the year I was supposed to get married, my fourth year of being a head track coach, and ten year English teacher, shaping young people in both athletics and academics — my dream career. I planned, I conquered, and then God or whoever intervened. That is when I realized my life was only my life if I shared it with someone greater than I. Call it God, the Universe, the Divine.

But even before that, as a child I LOVED imagination. I saw the world in ways that I never and still don’t have words to describe. I just now know how to move through the world as the person I am.

I would have never put all of this together without my journey into my soul’s purpose. A purpose, which I have always been not so much haunted by but felt. I have always felt a void in my life, and it wasn’t something I was missing from life. It was because I wasn’t serving my true calling. Everything I thought I was and supposed to be I had given up on. I let the world lead me into commonalities and boring mentalities.

We all crave the desire to follow our true passions, and it is God’s gift to us and for us to follow our hearts’ desires. BUT our society tells us differently. We are supposed to have a logical plan to live the life that we are told we are to live, and we become a victim to this ideology. But what happens if we all follow our heart’s; if we all take a chance to be our best and truest selves. Can this be wrong? Only if you ignore your opportunity, and that is why and when I had my chance to break free of societies’ standards. I plunged and dived deep into the waters that have been beneath me since I was that wide-eyed child-like dreamer; I had just been too scared to believe in myself. I let society, family, and my so-called friends tell me who Jessi is.

Now at night, my child self comes to me everyday with a new plan, new dreams, and the biggest sense of gratitudes I ever thought existed.