How to Find Love and Comfort—Letting Go of the Past by Releasing Emotional Baggage—Allowing Love to Come Forward

The Premise: The Search for Love
Everywhere I look, I see so many people searching for love. I know people who either have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or a significant other whom they are intimate with, yet they tell me they feel lonely and without love. I even have friends who are married who inform me they feel no one loves them. Do you feel you are in this same predicament, searching for love?

Why Answers Cannot Be Found
I have found that many times, the answers to our most fundamental questions are in plain sight. However, distractions blind us. Oftentimes, we only begin to see the truth whenever confronted with an unexpected problem.

Example: An Unexpected Problem
I live in the state of Texas. It is quite unusual to get snow here. However, recently it began snowing early one morning. Since it was not sticking to the roads, it was a nice change. As I looked out the window, the flakes were huge and the snow fell at a fast rate. Before long, everything was completely covered. By the end of the day, the Dallas-Fort Worth area had received a record snowfall, officially 12.5 inches of snow!

Various local news agencies reported numerous people loving the snow and playing in the uncommon winter wonderland. It was an opportunity for most everyone in the vicinity to take a day off from work. Kids loved it too as they were able to stay home from school and play. Even though driving on the roads was precarious, most everyone in the area were all secretly saying, "It is time to party. Let's play!" I too loved it.

However, I soon discovered that not all living things liked the snow. Besides the trees, whose branches were easily snapping from the weight of the snow, small animals were having a hard time navigating their way through the thick powder.

I have a little dog. Her name is Libby. She is a mutt, a terrier mix. She is not very tall and as the snow got deeper and deeper, I soon learned why she did not share in everyone's enthusiasm over the beautiful, white blanket of snow.

Libby is pretty much an inside dog. The only time she ventures outdoors is to use the facilities or go for a ride in the car with me. If she has to pee or take a dump, she lets me know. This particular day was no exception. However, when confronted with the new surroundings, she was slightly hesitant to move across the landscape. Each time I opened the door, she had an expectation that she would be able to do her job without any interference or challenge. I had the same expectation. However, when she looked at the snow, she would turn and then queerly gaze back at me, as if beckoning me to remove it! I would explain to her that although I may be capable of all things to her, I did not have the ability to remove the snow, at least, not without a shovel. And come on, do you really think I was going to do that? She would just have to make the most of it like the rest of us.

She was not happy. Instead, she dug in her heals and held her bladder and bowel. Hour after hour, she was getting more uncomfortable. By the third time out, she tried walking across the snow. But to her shock (and mine), she sank, the snow covering over half her small body. Although it appeared funny to me, she was not amused. She could barely move. Scared, she managed to make it to the safety of hard ground and then ran straight into the house, back into her comfort zone.

Holding On to Things that Need Releasing
Libby has the uncanny ability to hold onto her crap for a long time! Does that sound familiar? I think all of us can hold onto our own 'crap' in the form of emotional baggage for quite some time until some circumstance forces us to release it. That was the case with my dear little Libby. Although, it took numerous trips outdoors, it was not until Libby was so uncomfortable that she finally released her load. Even though she thought there was nowhere to go, until she became so uncomfortable that she was forced to do so, she was not able to find a spot to let go.

Letting Go
How did Libby finally let go? She found a spot near the house that was uncovered with snow. It was an area on the west side of the house. Here, the overhanging soffits on the house did not allow any snow to accumulate. If she had ventured over to the east side, she would have been confronted with snowdrifts resting up against the structure, finding no open grass to use. However, as luck would have it (or was it something else?), she went to the west side of the house.

You may not be familiar with the bathroom habits of dogs, but they prefer to roam a large area before relieving themselves. Although Libby did not have this luxury, as the spot on the west side was very small and narrow, it still provided some space for her where she did not sink or get her feet incredibly frozen. It took getting to an extremely uncomfortable place for her to find it, though.

Finding Comfort and Love
We all have a place that can give us comfort and love where we can release all our problems. Although we may initially take a familiar path, that path can sometimes become hazardous, forcing us to look elsewhere. If we continue to take the familiar road, we may sink. It may just be that getting to a most 'uncomfortable' place is necessary before we can find that open place. It is always there. We can dig our heals in, not seeing what is right in front of us, but it is always there.

When confronted by obvious outside influences, such as Valentine's Day where there is an expectation of certain love, we can miss the opportunity that is already there, just as Libby did. Right now, many of you are searching for love. It is already there. We all have love within. It is a matter of looking for it. If you are uncomfortable in your relationships right now, maybe the spirit is guiding you to release old baggage so that the true love of the universe can fill you—the love that exists within all of us, the love of God. When you find and embrace this love, you can find incredible comfort. Why do you not begin to look inside for love, rather than looking outside of you? It is there—a green, open patch waiting for you!

Copyright Statement
This article was written by Cindy L. Herb and may be reproduced on any related website provided the text is not changed in any form and this copyright statement is displayed unedited in its entirety at the foot of the article and you use the exact same HTML code to ensure a clickable link back to the author's site. Further articles are also available. Contact the author for more information. Copyright 2010 Cindy L. Herb, http://www.cherbchronicles.com. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.