I Love You

16 May

It was recently suggested to me that I do positive self-affirmations when I look at myself in the bathroom mirror each morning. Like, write stuff on sticky notes and post it on the mirror.

I don’t know why that should be so difficult, but it is. I sometimes will say positive things out loud. More often than not, my thoughts when I look at myself are affirming. But the whole sticky note affirmation thing has met with deep resistance.

I have enough clutter in there; I don’t want more.

I would feel silly.

What would my kids think if they saw.

Yeah, I know they are pretty lame excuses.

I saw this graphic on a friend’s Facebook page and thought, this may be the kind if affirmation I should put up on the mirror:

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I did not think of myself when I first saw that. I thought of a man I know (of course, it would be a man!). I would totally put that on his bathroom mirror. And if any man I love ever put that on my mirror, I would melt. I would not be thinking about clutter. I’d be thinking about leaving all my clothes on the floor.

So why shouldn’t I love my stubborn self that way?

Staying Put

14 May

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It was also the day that the Church in North America celebrates the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. The irony of these often concurrent events is that the message of the weekend’s scripture selections and the message my mother perennially attempts to impart on me are the same – stay put.

After spending time with the risen Jesus, whose crucifixion and very real death and burial they had witnessed personally, the Apostles were excited about the prospects for the repressed cultural minority to which they belonged. At one time the nation of Israel was a force to be feared and revered, but at the time of the Gospel, the Hebrews were little more than just another troublesome sect crushed under the foot of mighty Rome. But if their beloved Jesus could defy even death, surely He could and would restore God’s chosen people to their former glory.

Jesus’ response to them was twofold and probably not what they wanted to hear. First, He said, “It is not for you to know the times and seasons that the Father has established by His own authority. But you (emphasis mine) will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”

The power Christ promises just before He leaves them is not the power to change political structures or institute utopia on earth. It is a power promised to each one of the Apostles (and each one of us) personally. Although it is not described in yesterday’s readings, it has been touched upon in the other Easter Gospels. The power is the peace of Christ. Not world peace. Inner peace. There is nothing more powerful on earth, as it is in heaven.

But in order to receive this peace, we must follow Jesus’ direction to His Apostles. Stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes.

What does it mean to stay in Jerusalem? For the Apostles, it was a place of conflict, corruption, and crucifixion. It was also a place of hope, joy and miracles. It was a place of upper rooms – of suppers shared with friends, of doors locked in fear, of foreshadowing and revelation.

Each of us has our own Jerusalem, a place of earthly contradiction and spiritual paradox, of death and resurrection. And like most earth-bound beings, we don’t feel comfortable staying in such a place for very long. I may be able to accept the fullness of my Jerusalem for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But while I’m there, I’m longing for God to redeem and make everything the way it “should” be, or rather, the way I think it should be. And when that doesn’t happen on my time schedule, my instincts tell me to move on, now.

Yet Jesus told the Apostles to wait. And he gave them no indication about how long.

The mother figures in my life are continually telling me to do the same. The woman who gave birth to me is forever encouraging me to think twice, nay, three times, before taking action. I don’t like it one bit, but the Bible tells me to honor my mother, so I swallow my pride. I know her prayer for me is not unlike the prayer Paul had for the early Church at Ephesus – wisdom and enlightenment.

I have other mother figures whose wisdom and enlightenment I trust. And they, too, tell me to wait. To sit with my feelings. When I ask how long, they tell me I will “know” when the time is right.

In the mean time, I am called to do what the Apostles did after they watched their savior float away. They “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” I don’t plan to follow that literally. However, my body, mind and spirit is the temple I tend. I need to sit with myself and praise God with every small act of love toward myself. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for, but it promises to be more than I could ever imagine.

Sexless on Saturday

12 May

It’s Saturday, I’m single. For real this time.

I say “for real” because I’ve done a little dating on and off for the past year, and that distraction in my life has precluded me from being truly single. After taking a good, hard look at my relationship history and my current wants and needs, I made the decision to quit the dating business for now and just learn to love myself.

It shouldn’t be so hard. I’ve always been an independent kind of girl. I don’t like to be smothered or tied down or trapped by a relationship. I don’t mind traveling by myself and have always enjoyed solitary activities like horseback riding, photography, crafting, reading, gardening. There are only two aspects of being truly single that I really don’t like – mowing the lawn, and not having physical intimacy.

I realize I have choices. I could pay someone to mow my lawn, and when my budget allows, that is definitely something I’ll consider doing. Can’t really use the same solution for my other problem, though, can I?

I’m just grateful that I can admit I have that need at all. Some people can’t, and (ironically) I couldn’t while I was married. I’ve finally accepted that wanting sexual contact doesn’t make me a slut – it makes me human. On the flip side, not wanting sex unless it’s with someone who wants all of me and only me forever doesn’t make me a prude, either. It means I love myself enough not to settle for less than what I know is best for me.

I’m not saying that to judge those who have “casual sex.” It’s just that I have no idea how that works. I can’t even kiss a man I like without it forming a powerful attachment that scares the living daylights out of me and hurts when it ends, even when I’m the one ending it. The only way I’ve “successfully” managed to have a physical relationship outside of the context of an exclusive, committed relationship is to turn my emotions off or to lie to myself and say that I don’t really want anything serious. Neither of those choices is healthy for me. I want more, and I want my partner to want more, too.

So it’s Saturday, I’m single, and I’m missing sex. I know lack of physical intimacy never killed anyone, and I hope the time invested in myself will pay off in the future. I’m blessed to have several female friends who’ve gone through divorce and solid singlehood only to find the love of their lives when they were finally ready for it. I find it very difficult to trust God with this area of my life, but I do trust their example. They tell me it will be worth the wait. I hope so.

The Lord’s Prayer

3 May

Yesterday was the National Day of Prayer. I did not go to any special services for it; however, I did take time to reflect on prayer as one of the ways I practice self-care.

Most days, reading and meditation are a part of my morning routine. But before I crack open the daily readers, before I turn on the light, before I even get out of bed, I say good morning and thank you to God, even on the mornings I’m not ready to be awake. Especially those mornings.

One of my favorite prayers is an oldie but goodie – the Lord’s Prayer. The danger with this prayer is that it’s so familiar, I can easily forget what the words mean.

Most of the time, we pray this as a prayer of petition. We say, “Thy kingdom come,” when the kingdom is all around us, closer than the air is to our skin. We ask that God’s will be done (as if His Will didn’t already trump the worst self-will that we could throw out into the world when Jesus died and rose from the dead).

We ask God to give us “daily bread” (without acknowledging that if we are alive today to pray to Him, He has given us everything we need for today).

We ask God to forgive us, perhaps without realizing that the forgiveness we request is not unconditional, but directly proportional to the forgiveness we give to our worst, most unrepentant enemies.

We ask our heavenly Father not to lead us into situations that tempt us, as if it were even possible for God to lead us away from His presence and into His absence (which is the very definition of “sin”).

These petitions make no sense to me. The only real request in the Lord’s Prayer is, “Deliver us from evil.”

I don’t think the Lord’s Prayer was ever intended to be a petition. I pray it as a bold declaration of my faith:

God, you are my father, my creator. Your name – I AM – is holy, sacred and powerful.

Your kingdom is here inside me and all around me.

Your will is more powerful than any earthly power, reaches into every corner of this world and uses every good and bad choice we make for your ultimate glory. Even if I don’t like it, my present circumstances and even the evil I face are allowed by that Will, if only to draw me and others closer to you.

I trust that you will give me everything I need to be useful to you for this day only. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

I believe the only thing standing in the way of Your forgiveness is my ability to receive it, and the only thing blocking me from receiving Your forgiveness is my anger and resentment of others.

I know that if I am separated from You, it is because I was the one who moved away. Please protect me from and relieve me of anything that would come between us.

For the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory are yours, now and forever.

Amen.

The Middle of God’s Heart

1 May

I don’t usually do two “Musical Meditations” in one week, but this week is different, and this song is totally worth it.

For King & Country is one of my new favorite groups, and their song Middle Of Your Heart just started playing on Pandora, as if on cue for the soundtrack of my life. This is a great little lyric video:

I literally had just gotten off the phone with a friend of mine after a chat about the transitional state I’m in right now. I’m letting go of 20 years or more of self-rejection and the accompanying sadness that goes along with feeling those feelings before finally releasing them. The last 24 hours have been filled with enlightening revelations: first, that I cannot and no longer want to replace the people I’ve loved and lost. I’m sure most “normal” people understand this intuitively, but it has taken me a quarter of a century to learn this simple lesson. My tactic for relief had always been using one relationship after another to fill a void, or using volunteering, work, politics, video games (yes, video games!), and “drama” to keep me distracted from my feelings. I’m not beating myself up about it, but I do have to call a spade a spade; I was doing the best I could at the time. But today, and for the past several weeks, I’ve just felt so SAD, missing people that I’ve loved, mourning the mistakes I made with people who loved me that I completely misinterpreted and even rejected. But I can’t change the past, and there are no takebacks. And for the first time in my life, I don’t want to try to “fix” it by getting into something or someone new. This is progress! I’m maturing!

Another revelation is about the nature of the hole I’ve been trying to fill. It’s not a hole left by a relationship with someone else. I had always assumed that my pattern of serial monogamy was about the fear of being alone, or not being able to handle when a relationship (or even a job or a stage in life) met its natural end. No, the hole in this holey heart of mine is the emptiness that has been left each time I rejected myself, little by little over the course of my life. I’ve stubbornly refused to accept myself as I am and offer that self to God. In refusing to accept myself, I have rejected and lost myself. I’ve withheld myself even from the God in whom I profess to believe. The person I’m mourning is the perfectly imperfect me that I’ve tossed away, minimized, controlled, tormented, abused, hidden, and hated.

Today’s most recent revelation is that other people are noticing what a funk I’ve been in. When people who barely know me ask if I’m okay, I know it must be bad. And I’m not someone who wants to walk around with my heart on my sleeve. I want to pull myself up by the bootstraps and look strong, capable, happy, and “together.” Apparently, you all can see through my ruse. I do not feel comfortable with this. I feel naked. I feel vulnerable. But when I took this feeling to God in prayer, He very plainly told me that this is a good thing, because it means I’m being authentic.

So here I am with my bag of revelations – the truth about my self-rejection, the grief I’m finally allowing myself to feel (instead of self-medicating it away with people, places and things), and the vulnerability of knowing you are seeing me at my messiest right now.

I’m entirely ready. I know. And those who understand what this means know that everything I’m experiencing right now is cause for great joy. They know I’m on the journey into the very heart of the power that can save me and restore what is lost.

Bitch

30 Apr

When I was a teenager, my mom had this t-shirt that said “49% Bitch, 51% Sweetheart – Don’t Push It!” I the wake of almost three years of intense self-examination in the midst of separation and divorce, this is the conclusion I’ve come to about myself, and I’m at peace with it.

I don’t know why I’ve needed to spend so much time and energy to “discover” this about myself. Ten years ago my then-husband bought me one of those new-fangled iPod thingies, and one of the first tracks I loaded onto it was this one:

I knew even then that I’m a little bit of everything, light and dark. But I wasn’t ready to admit my dark side, much less accept it. I wanted to hide it, from myself especially.

A while ago I posted one of those silly Facebook statuses like, “Use the second letter of your first name to come up with one word to describe me,” and this guy who barely knew me at all nailed it when he called me “livacious.” Spellcheck insists that it’s not a real word. Spellcheck obviously hasn’t met me.

I AM livacious! I laugh loud, cry hard, fall fast, love passionately. That’s who I see when I look in the mirror every day, and I love her. My biggest regrets in life are when I was too scared to embrace my livaciousness.

Today, I’m not ashamed to be my best, and still fail. I’m not ashamed of my inner bitch, and I’m no longer scolding my inner child. I still have a ways to go before I can say that I’ve “arrived,” but I’m freer every day thanks to those friends who loved me when I couldn’t love my livacious self. Who have loved me even when I’m a bitch. I love you!

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The New Commandment

28 Apr

When I was a teenager, I had this brilliant plan. (I had lots of brilliant plans back then, because at 16 I knew everything. I miss those days sometimes!) I wanted to study all the world’s major religions and philosophies and discover the common threads and universal truth that ran through all of them so that I could choose that as my own personal credo. It seemed like a very logical way to go about spiritual growth; unfortunately, like most of my brilliant ideas, it never got off the ground, except for Philosophy 101 and a Modern Catholicism class in college, with a sprinkling of Buddhist reading on the side.

But God planned ahead in love when He put that thirst for unity and purpose in my heart, and like most of my sincere and honest desires, He fulfilled it in His own time. Just last year, without having to exert any effort on my part, I stumbled upon the common thread. I was at an exhibit about Pope John Paul II at the Richmond holocaust museum, and at the end of the exhibit there was a wall of “scriptures” from nearly every major religion you could imagine, all saying the same thing in their own way:

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

In Christianity we refer to it as the “Great Commandment,” and even the secular, non-religious world embraces this precept as the “Golden Rule.” It is so simple, yet so full of depth. It harkens to a psychological truism that we can’t truly love others without first loving ourselves. We cannot give what we do not have.

Therein lies the dilemma. I follow the Great Commandment well. I often give people exactly what they say they want, even at the expense of my own well-being and peace of mind. I do love others as I love myself, which on most days is not much. Let me clarify this – I have no trouble at all being selfish, meeting my own needs and wants, and doing everything I can to allay my fears that I’m not good enough to deserve love. But that’s not really self-love; that is self-centeredness.

So my best case scenario when following the Great Commandment is to allay someone else’s self-centered fear (which is an effort in futility, as we can’t receive the love we’re offered if we’re steeped in the fear that we don’t deserve it).

Before I even have a chance to beat myself up about this, the still, small voice of my God cuts through the circular thinking in my “brilliant” mind and reminds me that humanity had thousands of years to figure out how to follow this one command, and failed. Even after generation after generation experienced God loving, relenting and redeeming, time and time again, from the flood through the escape from Egypt to the end of the Babylonian captivity, humanity failed to grasp that they were loved and could be just as loving.

The problem isn’t with the commandment that every culture embraces as its moral foundation. The problem is in our flawed human application of it. We fall short.

We need a new commandment. One without loopholes. And we receive this new commandment only from Christ in today’s Gospel from John.

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”

Behold, God really does make all things new. Even the Great Commandment.

Loving my neighbor as I love myself falls short even when I apply the formula perfectly. But loving others as Jesus loves me is fail proof. Not easy. But fail proof. It is also uniquely Christian, found in no other world religion or culture, because it is centered not on self, but on Christ.

Love unconditionally. Forgive them when they don’t know what they are doing. Accept them even when they reject you. Feed them when they are hungry. Teach them simply. Be present to them even when you are tired. Be calm in the midst of the storm. Do not condemn them even when they are caught in the act; condemn only their hypocrisy. Heal with words of life and encouragement.

There is only one thing that Jesus did that we can’t do. We cannot save people from their sins. Funny, I see an awful lot of Christians trying to do just that, and only that, when it comes to loving like Jesus did. No wonder so many people reject the Good News. We are miserable failures at saving people from their sins, because that’s not our job, or our calling, and trying to “save” people just makes me look like an ass. Jesus did it once and for all, and doesn’t need any help from me on that one. As He said as he hung from the cross, “It is finished.”

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “If you have love for one another.”

It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Brilliant.

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