Compassion

I have spent nearly half of this year in mourning. There is a time for it. What I have begun to understand, though, is that there truly is a season for everything. Betrayal, particularly the all-encompassing soul betrayal, is no easy thing to come to terms with. In fact, it is so personal and such an intangible pain that most human beings have no adequate words to offer for comfort. "I'm sorry" or "It will get better" just feel like salt poured into a wound that one realizes over time no one can possibly heal with words. It is one thing to be betrayed, but what happens to one's physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being as a result of the betrayal is a whole process in and of itself. You cannot know this pain unless you have felt it. But, what I have started to understand deep within my spirit, is that there comes a time when holding onto the pain someone else has caused you injures yourself and the world more than the betrayer. More than that, the one who has betrayed, unless one of the rare human beings who carries absolutely no remorse, suffers immensely while you refuse to extend forgiveness.

Forgiveness is almost as difficult to describe as love. Neither can be touched, contained, controlled, or forced. Both are gifts that can only be given when truly first embodied within one's self. I believe many of us, including myself, prematurely offer what we believe to be forgiveness because we have been taught that we will not be forgiven ourselves or that there is some shame or guilt to be carried for an inability to forgive quickly. Forgiveness is an experience one must come to on their own terms, and I have found that the times I have not received forgiveness are the times I learn the most about the value of it.

In all of my pain and inability to forgive, I have hurt people whom I love so deeply. And, when we really truly stop to understand our lives, we all recognize that there is pain in us caused by others that inevitably has affected us in ways that perpetuate pain through our actions with others. It's circular and cyclical. It's all connected. Therapists build their careers on us behaving this way. We can spend a lifetime rehashing and pulling apart all the ways in which others have damaged us. But, when do we stop? When do we stop and recognize that every human being has been wounded, and if when we are wounded, we have made mistakes and desire forgiveness, why then, is it so difficult to offer this to those who make mistakes that affect us? Too often, we walk away from friendships, family members, and marriages because the growing pains of learning greater forgiveness and compassion become too great. Is there truly a limit on love, compassion, and forgiveness? No. The only limit is within ourselves...when we close off our capacity to expand as creatures of eternal healing for ourselves and those around us...when it becomes easier to restrict our innate purpose to be whole, because in order to be so we must rearrange expectations or needs we believed were critical for our survival. Change is hard. But, while the season may come for solitude, anger, and unforgiveness, so does the time come for compassion. Within each of us is the small child still hoping to find a safe place to lay our head. When we accept our own vulnerability, our own shame, and our own frailty, it becomes innate that we honor it in others.

So I ask you, who have you not extended compassion to? And who are any of us to determine that someone is undeserving of such a gift?

Head-on Collisions

Sometimes, prose fails us. It's not raw enough...not true enough. There's nothing pretty about heartbreak. There's nothing beautiful about feeling tossed by the wayside. Maybe it's just that I am not talented enough to find a passionate way of describing feeling run over by a semi, to find that you're still alive, and that no doctor exists who can mend your wounds.

Roadkill. That sounds like the word that describes this feeling, except really I feel more like this animal I hit one day years ago. I don't think I killed it. I think it either slowly died or forever stumbled around with a limp and half of its brain function from the impact of my car. I feel like I've gone through a head-on collision with a drunk driver, one who purposefully got behind the wheel with no consideration whatsoever for any one else on the road...only to have that driver jump out unscathed and shout profanities at me because the wreck was somehow my fault.

I write to no one tonight. There will be no one who could stop the collision...not even myself. It has happened. It has happened so many times, that I'm inclined to choose two courses: 1-never get on the road again or 2-become a better driver. This concussion is too severe to make any decision tonight.

We are all connected...

There's kind of this running joke in the lesbian community about how inevitably, we're all connected, because in one way or another, we've slept with someone who's slept with someone, etc. The point is not that we're slutty...but about the fact that we're a small community. I use this as an example for two reasons. One, I am a lesbian and I can relate to this experience. Two, and more importantly, the truth is that--gay or straight, black or white--all of us are connected. We do a disservice to our existence, our spiritual and emotional progress, and our interactions with one another to ever believe anything less. Maybe you disagree. Maybe you believe that somehow you can live and behave in whatever manner is fitting for you and it has no bearing on who comes after you and tells no story of who came before you, but it does.

My whole life I tried to escape many of the behaviors and beliefs that I grew up living around. I thought if I could somehow get far enough away, surely I would finally be able to flourish in my individuality...as if somehow outside of all of the chaos or pain, there existed in me some perfected version of "self." What I refused to want to accept or believe was that the very essence of my thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors were in one way or another a direct result of how I grew up. My dismissal or rebellion was a reaction to my past--not an escape from it.

We all in our own ways do the very thing I believed I could do--escape our own pain. The problem is--because we are all connected--every effort we make to escape our own pain has the potential to create or reawaken pain that others carry within them. The things that may be insignificant to us, may be greatly significant to others because of their own journey. We may have lived our lives feeling no one ever heard our voice and so we are determined to yell and scream in desperation now to be heard. We may express this in the company of someone who was yelled at during their childhood and we, inadvertently, cause them to feel their own wounds and vulnerability when they are around our "outbursts." We all unconsciously, subconsciously, or consciously engage in this exchange of connected pain on a daily basis--whether anyone else makes us aware of this.

So, what can we do? Some people would say we should all be in therapy working out every childhood issue we carry in us. Some people would say nothing. There is a wide spectrum of solutions, but I believe that the only true solution, the only lasting solution, is love. When we truly live the spirit of love, we are able to recognize both our own pain and the pain of others. We are strengthened, not weakened, by this recognition, because once again, we realize that the pain connects us. We can understand another's suffering, because we know what it means to suffer. We can hold another person who weeps, for we know the despair and emptiness we have felt ourselves. This is the very essence of empathy. We fail ourselves and each other when we fail to show empathy. When we carelessly or selfishly believe that somehow our pain is different than someone else's or that we are different from someone else.

Rather than running away from my childhood or from fear of embodying my parents' habits, I heal myself and the world by finding empathy for their human weaknesses or flaws...for my mere ability to have empathy requires the recognition that I, too, am imperfect. I can't help but question what the world would be like if we truly lived as if we are all connected; if we understood that everything we do and say truly does have an equal and opposite reaction; if we could look at ourselves in the mirror and admit that we have probably injured more people than we care to admit and that only through love will we ever be able to see and repair what is broken.

May you understand that my pain is your pain though it may be dressed in a different mask, and may you awake to commit for the rest of your days to love, truly love, fully love, at last.

Love Yourself

For my entire life, I have searched for love. I have always felt what I was looking for was just out of my reach. Surely, if I just loved harder, communicated better, or found a "better" partner, I would find love returned to me as I needed it. When I have failed to tangibly grasp this intangible thing called "love"...I have crashed. I have believed at times I would die without it. I have stayed longer than I should have or given more than should have ever been expected to for fear that I had much more to lose leaving.

I've read CoDependent No More. Prayed endlessly. Gone to therapy. Meditated. Read more. Written. Cried. Exhausted myself...and slowly died inside constantly running after something I just could not ever quite seem to keep ahold of long enough to find security in.

Then, on a random night, at 27 years old, with no one around to sound the alarm on the greatest discovery of my life...I quietly, in one tiny moment in space and time, realized I found it...the love is in me. All these years I have spent dying to be loved, instead of finding the strength within to look at myself in the mirror and realize I am love. I deserve someone who sees the love in me. Who sees it shine inspite of my human frailty and fears. Who brings me back from my own self-condemnation to tell me how I'm none of the terrible things I may feel about myself. Even more than deserving someone that spectacular, I finally am beginning to see that I have to believe it about myself. I don't need others to affirm my giving spirit, my honest heart, my faithful friendship, or my pure intentions.

Maybe none of you can relate. Maybe you have always been blessed and healthy enough to only allow people in your life who see the goodness in you and ignite it deeper. That is not my story until now. My spirit, heart, friendship, and intentions have been beaten down in ways that are unspeakable, in ways that I hope to one day heal from completely. I have a long way to go in this journey called self-love...but just the taste of it, the empowerment of it, the wholeness in it, is keeping tears from flooding my eyes tonight. Finally...relief is coming. I never imagined it'd be in my own reflection staring back at me.

Be Still

Many years ago, a dear friend of mine took and shook my soul while we were on vacation together. She started to speak and because of the nature of my love for her, every word out of her captivated me. There I stood, hanging on to every word wondering what she would speak next, and she took me into a meditative trance almost instantaneously. She was sharing a spiritual awareness she was experiencing and without interruption or hesitation she spoke the following:
“Be still and know that I am God..
Be still and know that I am..
Be still and know that I...
Be still and know that…
Be still and know…
Be still and..
Be still..
Be.”

She spoke each line slowly, but without complete pause, to where I found myself for just maybe 30 seconds, in total and complete silence and stillness within me and connected to her and the life all around us. It had been years since I had felt that connected to myself and it was the very moment that stood out to me as the beginning of a new life. It, by no means, immediately healed or helped me escape the hell I had created inside and outside of me, but it reminded me that, if even for a few seconds, I hadn’t lost the capacity to connect and feel close to God and another person.

It has taken years for me to really grasp the power in that meditation, with each line calling out a distinct thought, pause, and reverence. As we can see with this meditation, before we get down to the most basic and simple statement: “be,” we are called to “be still.” Every human being, no matter how distracted, confused, or empty has what I believe is an eternal longing to just “be.” We have such frail, human ways to cry out for this-we beg our family or partners to just “love us as we are.” We spend much of our lives seeking and trying and praying to be accepted and “enough.”

Yet, what I believe is one of the most critical things we can do for ourselves-in order to heal, to awaken, to live fully-is to be still. It is in the stillness that we hear ourselves, but also that we can hear God. It is not enough to just be physically still. We must find ways to come into the reverent silence that cultural and religious noise often drowns out. In our darkest moments, in our weakest days, we can instantaneously embrace the sacred stillness that aches to be heard and known.

Our calm is only but a few slow breaths away, only but a half an hour of going within to honor our spirit’s calling…it doesn’t take much. We often blame our lack of intimacy with ourselves on not having enough time. I can assure you that once you have the taste of stillness and all the gifts it has to offer, you may find yourself saying you don’t have time for that television show, because you need to be still, instead.

I challenge you to be still...in order to find your soul’s deepest longing, to simply “be.”

Healing

It is without question that my words will never even come close to capturing the emotion, connection, and awareness that flood my being today. The season in which I have been going through in my life has been the most difficult, confusing, and uncertain place I have ever found myself in. I have literally wrestled with Light, with Darkness, and with myself. I have woken with panic attacks, slept with my eyes still feeling open through the loneliest nights, and wondered through the deepest pain if I will survive. My deepest fear has not been that I wouldn't survive, it has been that I would, but that I would be damaged and drained forever. I have been willing to run to doctors, to medicine, to therapists, to my lover, to friends, to the bottle, all in absolute terror that I simply could not live for one more day in the pain and emptiness my life seemed to always hand me.

And, then...something happened. It really happened. I stopped running. I stopped running to everyone, not just by not picking up the phone, but I emotionally and mentally and spiritually stopped running. And, instead of talking or crying or writing or DOING anything, I surrendered. If I had a nickel for every time throughout my life that I have prayed to God for help or landed on my knees in what I thought was surrender, I would be wealthy. No..this was different. This is different. It is not the act of getting on your knees that makes it surrender; it is the spirit letting go that makes the difference. You see, I know all of the movements that appear to be surrender. I can mimic being religious as good as any other person who grew up immersed in Church. Yet, I never intentionally "went through the motions." I have hungered to feel connected to God my entire life. But, for a very long time now, I was so angry and hurt by those who claimed to be followers of Christ, that I simply gave up on everything.

When I was 14 years old, a visiting pastor at our church called me out in a crowd of hundreds of people, and spoke something over my life. I wish that I had the recording, to hear each and every word tonight, but I destroyed it years ago as I felt I would never return to God. In essence, he said that I was called to do great things, but that it meant I would have to change some of my friends, some of my behaviors, to open up fully to the work set before me. I was in a crowd of people at the alter because he had been moved to have an "alter call" for people who had been sexually abused and carried the weight with them. With my legs shaking, I stepped out and walked up to that alter, for the first time admitting to myself, in a room full of people, that I needed help. In a perfect world, I would've walked up that night and been immediately healed from every scar and memory and given new eyes at which to see myself, but instead, I, of all people, received a powerful, loving message I have begun to remember like never before.

Instead of immediately receiving that message and feeling filled up inside, I grew weary through the years and desperately sought any means to alleviate my pain. It never ever worked. My story is such of the Prodigal Son. "I can do this on my own!" Yet, I am writing this now on my journey back home-back home to the Spirit that has never failed me. Today, that Spirit woke me up with the brightest sun beaming in my window-which would usually enrage me as I tried to sleep in. Instead, I could hear the Spirit's voice in me, calling for me to go outside and embrace the day set before me. So, with my book in hand, in what is none other than the most stunning, July day I have ever experienced in Florida, I sat by the water, reading about becoming God's best version of myself, and the wind enveloping my entire body.

You cannot possibly understand, for this is my journey, my emotion, my connection to myself and God...but I'm beginning to heal. Heal. The little girl who screamed and cried and could never find the love and help she was in need of is beginning to heal. The lost teenager who hated her body, her desires, her scars is beginning to heal. The grown woman who ran to empty bottles and empty relationships is beginning to heal. After spending so many years clinging to other people's stories of healing and awakening, hoping to find the answers to how to make it happen for me...I'm discovering...finally...that it's my story that holds the answers. I was made as a masterpiece of God...not the broken, dirty girl I thought I was. I have gifts that have only felt like burdens because I have not used them for the purpose in which they've been given. I'm just so grateful...so very grateful to have just a taste of the healing set before me.

And, just in case you were wondering...I will do those "great things" for which I'm called to do.

Revitalized

An inspired thought came to me today: you cannot be revitalized if you are anesthetized. Sometimes we're willing to be conscious of our attempts to numb ourselves, but all too often, we do it without even realizing it. It becomes so familiar to us, that we forget what it's like to truly feel. Yet, it is our very feelings which often signal to us a need we have-for change, for silence, for joy, for anything.

I've spent most of my life trying to dull down the feelings in me-for so many reasons-but ultimately, because I wanted to stop hurting. The pain never seemed to go away. And, as unbelievable as it might seem, it has only been until very recently that I'm coming to terms with the fact that you simply cannot wish or numb pain away. I've called myself an "addict" when I went to meetings. I've been quick to throw many labels on myself through the years, when in all actuality, the only label that fits is "human." I'm human and in all of my frailties and ill attempts at existing with what I thought was a crappy deal I got handed in life, the pain never went away.

I have used what could be pleasures in life-food, money, love, lust, margaritas...to simply keep the pain a little more at bay. Pleasures are meant to be savored and honored for their purpose-not abused to fill a void or numb a pain they could never possibly relieve. It sounds so simple, but when you've been managing your pain, rather than releasing it, it is hell.

I believe that there is only one way to be revitalized...and that is to no longer anesthetize ourselves to whatever needs healing. So, while the in-between of pain and healing is an uncomfortable, and often, scary place to be...the promise it holds is that I am on my way forward, no matter how many baby steps it takes. And, when you really stop looking back with sorrow or looking forward with fear, you create a space to connect to all that truly matters...the very moment you are in.