Del Rio News Herald

One of the most valuable discoveries I made during my journey though the desert was how many loving messages are woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

Around the time I started writing “The Awakening Heart” for the Del Rio News Herald, I began to receive a special blessing that would come every week for many years.

Little did I know back then that I would be given this present not just once, but again and again, for almost the entire run of my former column.

I still remember the first moment I discovered this unexpected gift and the deeply personal meaning it held for me.

I was delighted, but not at all surprised, when Love spoke to me through the big red letters on a semi-truck as it barreled into town that brisk winter day.

As I recall, I was driving my boys to school one morning, and was eager to get back and start writing for the next Sunday’s paper.

For some reason, the middle of the week was always the time I would begin to hear the article that would run the following weekend.

Turning onto the highway from Wagon Wheel Road, I heard my youngest son exclaim, “Mom, look! There goes the ‘HEARTLAND EXPRESS’!”

And so it happened that a giant-sized load of Love would roll into Del Rio each Wednesday, just as I was set to explore another layer of my own awakening heart.

I have always known that my small contribution to the glorious tapestry of life involves inviting people to live from the heart.

In my world, the spiritual “heart” is the ultimate receiver of the most perfect kind of Love. This, I believe, is the place inside us where we can be most fully alive.

Living in the heartland is an experience that requires honesty and humility, and the willingness to return to a simpler way of seeing life.

It means dropping our illusions and admitting our vulnerability, and remembering how to embrace each moment with childlike innocence.

Heart centered living is about releasing the things within that keep us from the purity of spirit we were meant to embody all along.

In the heartland, we learn that it is healthy and holy to experience our feelings, since doing so clears the way for the flow of Love through our lives.

For all of the years I was gifted to see the “HEARTLAND EXPRESS” as it made its weekly trips into the Queen City, I felt humbled and privileged.

But then one day, it didn’t come. And then the days turned into weeks and I still didn’t see it.

So, it was with sadness that I finally realized the big white truck was no longer making its mid-week run down Highway 90.

That was a time of loss for me anyway, because my family had just learned that we would be moving from this place that we had grown to love so much.

A part of my sense of loss was the acceptance that the work I had so enjoyed doing through my weekly column was about to come to an end.

When I stopped seeing the truck, it signaled to me that “The Awakening Heart” had entered into the final season of its life.

Several months after leaving Del Rio, I was stopped at a traffic signal on my way home from school with my boys in Yellow Springs.

While we waited for the light to change, my son suddenly exclaimed, “Hey! It’s the “HEARTLAND EXPRESS!”

When I turned my head to look, my eyes were met with the familiar sight of the white truck with the big red letters that had meant so much to me for all those years.

And once again, I was reminded that Love speaks to us through the most ordinary things when we keep our hearts clear enough to hear.

As the semi-truck rumbled down the road, I was left with the feeling that home has little to do with where we hang our hats.

Our true home is revealed when we live each day from the deepest experience of the heartland.

All we must do to find it is open the door and allow the healing presence of Love to renew our hearts.

A bright morning

star creation

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Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County since 1929

A Southern Newspapers publication.