Posts Tagged ‘trust’

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On Becoming a “We”

February 14, 2011

“The mystery which unites two beings is great; without it the world would not exist.” -The Gospel of Philip, Analogue 40, as translated by Jean-Yves Leloup

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to get married, to become a “we.” It’s already starting to happen. I am still an “I” and I am also now part of a “we.”

Recently I faced having to make a four-figure repair to my 11-year-old car. Upon hearing the shop’s estimate, I wanted to retreat to my room, shed some financial-worry tears, and figure out – on my own – how I was going to pay for it. But sitting on my couch was the man who loves me, waiting and willing to be there for me. I felt so strongly the urge to turn and leave, to be alone in my fear. Instead, I walked toward him, and he reached out his arms and held me. Then he helped me reason things out so I could make the best decision for me and for us.

I’ve spent many years thinking about “I.” Who am I in a family of five sisters? What’s best for me in my career? How do I take care of myself – mind, body and soul – on a daily basis? There is a tradition in some 12-step programs that reads, “Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.” My understanding is that we all win when we put the “we” first.  My fiancé’s 100-year-old grandpa gave us similar advice for our marriage, based on his 68-year experience of shared life with the one he loved. He said that after we say our vows, everything that affects one will also affect the other. I feel myself becoming more careful.

I’m not losing myself or discounting my own needs, rather I’m gratefully discovering what it is like to hold our union as precious. I feel self-full and a little more selfless at the same time. I’ve also decided to add my beloved’s name to mine after we marry. For me, the symbolism is powerful. “I” and “we.”

There is a mysterious connection growing stronger and more fluid between us. We’re growing a “we” and it is a deliberate and beautiful process. I hope this contemplation and practice of “we” in my relationship will also inform how I am in my family, at work, and in the world.

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Posted in Love and Marriage | 1 Comment »

Welcoming the Unknown

September 27, 2010

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God

I first heard these lines, written by Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, when they were included in a profound sermon given by Brother Geoffrey Tristram. I thought God had spoken directly to me, because it answered the exact yearning of my heart. Trust in the slow work of God, Eleanor. Accept the anxiety of suspense. Trust that there is something necessary happening during this time of not knowing.
 
It was the first time I had heard the suggestion to accept the anxiety. I’ve always tried to get beyond anxiety as quickly as possible, thinking that peace is where I’m supposed to be. I regularly try to breathe my way, or “yoga” my way, to peace. If I can’t, I call a friend, talk to a coach, write my favorite priest, read a book hoping for insight, or…start trying to control my way out of feeling anxious. By trying to manipulate outcomes or force answers before their time, I often create more of a mess inside and around me.
 
What I have not done is trust that there is value in the anxiety of not knowing. I don’t have to make it go away. It will go away in its own time, after the work of God is done. Paradoxically, once I start accepting anxiety, it lessens its grip on me.

We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.

Indeed, I’m impatient by nature. If there is change to create in the world, I want it to happen now! If there is love to be experienced, I want to be living all of its glory now! While my belly is full of passion, my heart doesn’t always get it – that not everyone is where I am, when I am. Lately, my head has saved the day, by coming to understand intellectually that abiding love takes time to grow strong roots, and lasting change takes planning, patience and thoughtful execution.

Change within me takes time as well. Many times God has seen me through this familiar struggle to surrender control and accept the anxiety of not knowing how it will turn out. Luckily, God didn’t give up on me in frustration when that fear of the unknown showed up again. Instead, God sent me this poem. I thought I’d share it with you because I think I might finally be getting it.

Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
- that is to say, grace -
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

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Peace

April 5, 2010

Of all the devotion, betrayal, strength, fallibility, sadness, and glory I heard and read about during Holy Week, the line that moved me the most was this: “Peace is my last gift to you, my own peace I now leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give to you.” (The Book of Common Prayer)
 
I’ve written often about doubt and uncertainty on this winding path of mine. It is challenging, at times, to feel lasting peace about earthly matters such as money, love, work, health insurance, family misunderstandings, and social injustice. Yet, in the midst of all or any of those, I’ve come to recognize the kind of peace that is a gift from God – “peace which the world cannot give.”
 
This peace I feel in my body. When the core of me is open, breathing, and calm, my mind feels safe to follow suit. In this state, I trust the peace of the certainty I feel – certainty that it all means something and God is there for me to lean on. It is the deep peace of forgiveness after confessing “things done and left undone.” It is the peace of saying, “Yes, I do believe in this mystery that ‘passes all understanding.’”
 
When watching and participating in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services last week, I had to acknowledge that I believe in what this sacred practice represents. Seeing my clergy dressed in black with their backs turned to the congregation as they prayed was incredibly moving for me. I believe in the underlying story. So I say the words; I sing; I kneel; I eat the spiritual food. On Easter, it sank in deeper.
 
The judgmental, exclusionary, violent, sexist, neighbor-against-neighbor interpretations of Christianity have made me wary of Christianity as a whole. I’m grateful now to be learning a profoundly different take on what Jesus was teaching and to have found an understanding of God’s kingdom that I want to be a part of.
 
My mind still asks, “Am I for real? Is this devotion to and worship of God coming from my heart or my head?” I trust my body when she replies, “Yes. This is real for me. I feel this deeply. It has integrity.” Writing about and saying “Jesus” out loud is, at times, uncomfortable for me, yet being with him in private always feels natural. When I meditate, I invite him to sit with me.  He offers his hands. I take them. This is complete peace for me.
 
What brings you peace? If you’d like to share your own practice, please do so.

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Posted in Coaching, Inspiration, Women's Circle | 3 Comments »

Being Sure

March 22, 2010

I attended my first 12-step program meeting at the age of 26 because I was consumed with fear of the future. I was desperate for more surety about how my life was going to work out. The potential for disappointment controlled me. Having just moved to the gorgeous and playful mountains of Colorado in my mid-twenties, I knew I wasn’t supposed to be feeling terrorized.
 
This was a significant step on my spiritual journey. In the years since, I’ve been on a quest to lessen my attachment to surety, and at the same time figure out whatI can place my trust in. I set aside my hope for an illustrated how-to guide to the future, and instead developed a deep trust that no matter what happened, I would not be alone in figuring it out.
 
I also worked with a life coach who helped me grow beyond needing surety before acting. I so feared doing the wrong thing and bringing ruin – financial, emotional or professional – upon myself or others.
 
I finally let this fear go when I surrendered to God’s will for my life – a practice I repeat daily. And wouldn’t you know it? Lately, at the most unexpected moments, I’ve been struck by a feeling of certainty.
 
While sitting at a stoplight, something opens in my heart and fills my eyes with tears of awareness. It feels like the most precious grace. My priest described grace as “the unasked for, unearned love of God.” When the tears come, it is because I recognize that God is leading me to touching, and at times astonishing, surety about pieces of my life.  
 
As I take alternatingly bold and baby steps into a new and unknown career, people, to my amazement, are saying yes, and doors are opening in places where I did not expect to find them. As I commit to loving and being myself in a new relationship, a calm, heart-opening surety I’ve never felt before grows daily.
 
Then there is surety about infinitely smaller things. For instance, this morning I wanted to buy two plastic Adirondack chairs to make my deck more hospitable for my visiting boyfriend (and to finally feel like an adult with real deck furniture.) I debated it, though:
 
“Maybe I should get just one. He can sit in that. I’ll sit in the rotting, 6-year old beach chair and save $24.99,” said the more frugal part of my brain.
 
“But you really feel like crap sitting in that rotting beach chair,” the part of me that loves myself replied.  “And you refrained from buying the cute Liberty of London bra and panty set. That’s $24.99 saved right there!”
 
I debated this all the way to the check-out line. Still unsure, I let the cashier ring up both chairs and announce the total. It was unexpectedly low – they were on sale! Debate closed. Ahhhh, surety.
 
Is God present in small, rather insignificant decisions like this one? I think so. I think God is available for consult whenever and wherever I invite Him in. Actually, I think God is present whether I invite Him or not. I debate with myself, ask for help, take a step in further, ask again, wait, meditate, write, plead, listen, and act again. And so it goes. Sometimes with an onslaught of tears at a stoplight, sometimes gleefully at the cash register, and sometimes after years of contemplation, clarity comes.
 
What are the signs of surety for you? What inspires you to act with when there’s no guarantee? If you care to, please share your thoughts here.

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Posted in Coaching, Inspiration | 2 Comments »

A Mother’s Love

March 2, 2010

“In the earthly realm, what kind of trust most approximates your trust in God?” That was a question put to me this week.  My answer was that I have never once doubted my mother’s love.
 
It has astounded me that through all the hard work of raising my four sisters and me, and all the grief we gave her (she raised five opinionated girls!), my Mom’s love for us remains, at its core, unwavering and limitless. My trust in the steadfastness of her love grew over time and repeated experience. By my adolescence, I was sure that it would always be there no matter what. I believe that if a child receives nothing else from a parent, trustworthy love is a rock upon which she can build a life.
 
When I ask teenage girls from challenging circumstances to name the most important person in their lives, almost all of them answer, “My Mom. Because she takes care of me.”
 
Their calm and grateful trust in their mothers’ care and my own experience illuminate my understanding of God’s motherly love – a constant, deep, and forgiving love that can be trusted despite my disappointing Her, turning my back on Her, judging Her, telling Her what to do, or rudely asserting my independence from Her.
 
My Mom recently wrote me about her experience as a young mother of five girls and how the women’s movement saved her. “I finally felt I had a right to my own life, and I redoubled my efforts to raise each of you girls to understand that you were as deserving of your place on earth as anyone, to have a backbone, and to have a sense of your own innate worth and strength.”
 
I believe that is what Mother God wants for all of Her daughters as well – to know that each of us is deserving of our place on Earth and to trust our innate worth and strength.
 
Even as an adult, my mother’s hug is still enormously comforting to me. Her embrace creates a feeling that is aptly described by the words of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic known for her theology of God as Mother: 
 
“But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 
 
To be able to trust in that kind of love, whether from God or one’s own mother, is what I wish for everyone.

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Joy Returns!

February 22, 2010

Many of you are aware of the sorry state I was in at Christmastime. I was down in heart, to be sure. I deemed it blessed then, only to realize later just how true that label was.
 
Yesterday, during a retreat at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Brother Curtis Almquist from the Society of St. John the Evangelist reaffirmed for me that when our hearts are broken – broken open – God can come in. Usually, God has been patiently waiting for a welcoming of His ever-available and powerful love.
 
I also find that when my heart is vulnerable, it is more sensitive to the slightest healing grace. Similarly, when my own will has repeatedly brought me to a dead end, I become far more attuned to the subtlest of Divine leadings.
 
So here we are eight weeks post-Christmas meltdown. And I’m deeply well. You see, after I placed my love life in the hands of God (with a touch of resignation), to my surprise, God delivered immediately. Now, I know that God often delivers in ways I don’t recognize. Yet this time, the gift came in clear-as-day and in such a form that I knew it, or rather he, must be from God.
 
A dear girlfriend once spoke of the comfort of being “well loved” in her long-term marriage even through its tests and trials. She wished for me the same feeling. I knew deep down that despite having been in a few romantic relationships in recent years, I had not been well loved in quite a while. Nor had I loved particularly well.
 
Perhaps I had to understand just how well I am loved by God before I could really experience that on a human level? Perhaps God wants me to know Him now through a man’s love? I will say that I’m amazed by the experience.
 
I heard a few lines of Psalm 30 yesterday that perfectly capture my gratitude for this gift I’ve received:
 
“O Lord my God, I cried to thee for help,
   and thou has healed me…
Weeping may tarry for this night, 
   but joy comes with the morning.”
 
Joy did return, and boy, is it a good feeling! When I start to fear that this too shall pass, I take comfort knowing that joy and weeping are ongoing parts of life. I’ve come to trust that God will use each to deepen my relationship with Him.
 
In the meantime, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy this.

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Posted in Coaching, Inspiration, Women's Circle | 3 Comments »

Anticipating a Lottery Win

October 19, 2009

How many of you think that if you prepare yourself for disappointment, you lessen the potential for being hurt or embarrassed? Well, let me tell you flat out, it is a sucky way to live! I know; I’ve been doing it for years. Preparing for disappointment.

What happens when we do that? In my experience, my heart closes just enough to stay safe (not going to let you in fully if you’re going to leave me tomorrow), my light dims (not going to show you all of me – who knows which part will scare you away… my tenderness? my openness? my power?) and my trust level in any remotely vulnerable situation is one foot in, one foot out (not going to be a fool again; I’ve been here before!)

Sounds welcoming doesn’t it?!? Would you want to be involved with someone like that? Why would the Universe bring in full-on happiness, when fear wouldn’t even let it fully permeate?

Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m done with that! For now on, instead of anticipating disappointment, I’m anticipating a lottery win! As if I have an endless supply of “Ace in the Hole” scratch-off cards and I know for sure that one of them is a winning ticket. It’s just a matter of patience, persistence and belief in the possibility.

When I lived in Colorado, my girlfriend Megan said to me, “When you meet you meet your man, I want you to feel like you’ve won the lottery.”

I’ve kept that little ditty in my back pocket with each new date and each passing relationship. A winning ticket doesn’t mean he has to be perfect (to quote Brad Paisley how boring would that be!), yet he does need to be perfect for me. Our pairing needs to serve his Highest Good, mine and, ideally, the Greater Good. Now, that would be a lottery win!

My heart always knows when there’s no BINGO (sometimes only admitting it to myself after the fact). It could be a B3, an N25 or a G54 that completes my winning card. I don’t know exactly which (that’s the fun of playing!) but I believe it’s just about to be called.

What if we approached all of life anticipating a lottery win? While job searching, baby making, or creating affordable health care for all people (couldn’t resist a little plug!) … What kind of energy would we put into the world? How would others experience us? What kind of possibility would we see right before our very eyes? How much would we be willing to open our hearts?

I’m ready! Are you?

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Trust on a scale of 1 to 10

October 4, 2009

“I felt the strong bond that women have with each other regardless of how well they know each other, the compassion we have toward one another and the capacity at which we can whole-heartedly give and receive of ourselves.” – Women’s Circle participant

In a workshop a few years ago, we were asked to stand in front of a woman we didn’t know and sense how much she trusted other women on a scale of 1 to 10. I hesitantly yet honestly rated my partner a 4; she gave me a 9. Was I naïve to trust so willingly? No, I intuitively knew it was a gift from growing up with my own built-in women’s circle of four fun and devoted older sisters and a deeply loving mother.

My trust of the feminine has also been infused by my experience in a college sorority (I know, it’s true, hold your smirks), being witness to the strength and raw emotion of thousands of teen girls in Girls For A Change, and spending countless hours in women’s workshops opening my soul to be seen and felt by fellow travelers.

It was painful to so viscerally feel the walls inside this woman in front of me and wonder where her mistrust was born. Perhaps from an early experience of being abandoned – emotionally or physically – by a significant woman in her life who lacked the capacity to fully care for a child. Perhaps from the betrayal of adolescent girlfriends trying to mask their own insecurity. Or perhaps she found it difficult to trust the depth and tenderness of the feminine in herself, leading her to mistrust it in others and in the world.

While I’m grateful for my experience with the women in my life, I do understand what it’s like to have a hard time trusting what is unfamiliar or unknown. Just today I wondered, on a scale of one to ten, how much do I trust God’s will for me? It’s always a 10 in hindsight! Or easily an 8 when, conveniently, God’s will seems to match my own. However, it is certainly more of a 0 to 3 when I don’t yet understand, the answers aren’t clear and I feel I’m in a holding pattern (more like a cell!) with my yearning and confusion.

At those times, it takes all of I’ve got in mind, body and spirit to surrender to this something which “passes all understanding.”

I’m learning though, through gradual experience, that trust is indeed a more magical, empowering and tender way to live, a way that heals old fears. For me, practicing trust goes hand-in-hand with learning to receive. Opening my heart to another’s inherent goodness or to the care of a power infinitely greater than my human self, allows me to discover just how deeply I am seen, held and loved. It’s a moment-to-moment choice I choose to make again and again.

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Posted in Women's Circle | 2 Comments »

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