So often in my life I feel something that seems negative, and turning, I run from it. It is easier and less painful to ignore those thoughts/feelings and pretend like they're not there. So I fill my life with stuff - not always bad stuff, mind you. Lately, I've been working out like a beast, spending time in coffee shops, reading, writing, drawing, volunteering, all perfectly lovely things. But they've been busying my mind and my heart from doing the hard, painful soul-work that I know I need. I'm prolonging the inevitable.
So today, I sat down for a concerted amount of time and willingly entered into the mess. I recently read the book Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. He says a lot of remarkable things about turning inward and knowing ourselves well. He also speaks to fear and pain, "In terms of soul-work, we dare not get rid of the pain until we have learned what it has to teach us". He says later, "Growth is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image." With that in mind, I processed through the myriad of feelings I've been avoiding in the past month. Up they bubbled to the surface, ugly and pissed off because I ignored them for so long. It's true that I know it is in this wildly uncomfortable place that I will grow and learn. I'm much more mold-able because I am completely out of control.
But I think I am beginning to see how all of it fits; how everything really does belong. By recognizing and speaking to my fear, I think it has less power over me. I'm not as afraid of it anymore. Each of these feelings somehow fits into the bigger picture...and it's okay that it is a part of my picture because, at the end of the day, Love still wins. It just doesn't look like what I always imagined. Love is messy. Love is reckless. Love is wounded and bleeding on the floor. Love speaks, love listens. Love breathes into brokenness and revives. Love feels my pain alongside me - and it makes it much more rich and full. Love isn't rainbows and unicorns or dancing on clouds in sunshine. It's much more real than that; it encompasses much more breadth. Love is sacrifice and surrender, love is letting go. And as Leonard Cohen's lyric says, "Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and broken hallelujah". I think I've come to the conclusion that it's both/and. Love sings and frees and dances. But at the same time it mourns and grieves. And from the pit, it gasps out 'hallelujah's.
