Un-expectations

Last week at church, I had one of those stereotypical moments that you see in movies or shows when a skeptic is brought to tears and finally is open to God. The church-goers around them embracing them and telling them, "Welcome home, Dear Child. You are so loved." No, but for real...though much less dramatic, I had a moment.

I want to say that it started with May 20th when I went up to the river to do a physical emotional purge. I had a court hearing the next day and I was really feeling all the feels and simultaneously not having the opportunity to process them and release them. This is what the river is good for.

Though I had my baby with me, it was still healing and beneficial. We were able to perch on a rock and he allowed me time to speak what I needed to speak and cry what I needed to cry. I always pour out my gratitude. And then I basically speak out loud my feelings and emotions and experiences. I "catch-up" with the river, so to speak. And then I do my praying and meditating and ask for the things I need help with the most. This time, it was Release. Getting rid of all the dead weight I'd been carrying for so many years. Feeling light and free again. Saying goodbye and kicking out the bad people in my life, never to see them again. Freedom.

I finished with gratitude and appreciation while my baby was telling me, "Okay, lady, wrap it up." And off we went, walking back through the forest, stopping here and there to look at flowers and bugs and trees and to take photos. Listening to the forest speak to us through her birds and breeze and leaves. I love, love, love it.

The next day at court, I was devastated by the outcome. Everything seemed ass backwards. It felt like I hadn't been heard. For me, in those first couple of weeks after the hearing, the "bad guys" won, as they always seem to do, nihilism and depression were starting to set in. The self-care routine stopped. The head-meds were sometimes taken, sometimes forgotten. I was all out of whack, and my anxiety was starting to become a nuisance. Fear. Exhaustion. Anger. Heaviness. It was literally sucking the happiness out of my life, and there was much to be happy and excited for!

And then, Sunday, May 2nd came. A day I was dreading for personal reasons. But I was looking forward to church, simply because I felt like there was going to be some type of answer. Something I needed to know. Because I had been struggling so hard over those past two weeks to understand how something so painful and traumatizing could make it through to the other side, seemingly to perpetuate that pain and trauma. How could evil win this one??

I eagerly sat there, awaiting an explanation. "Tell me how and why, God?" Now, I had been getting nudges here and there throughout the months; a little voice chiming in every once in awhile telling me to open my heart. To embody love. To let go. To forgive. Every time this voice came through, I would roll my eyes and huff and puff my way through the day. "Absolutely not! Not when it comes to this one!" Over time, the rolling of the eyes and the huffing and puffing lessened and I started to really feel it, which felt defeating in a way. It was the last thing I wanted to do with this specific situation. But it also felt out of my control. Like how it feels when your mom is dragging you along to some boring work meeting or something when you're just a kid who wants to play outside.

Even at the river, I had that voice come through while asking for Release. I only sighed and a few tears came down that I quickly brushed off.

Now time came for the sermon of the day. The reverend read a passage. It was about the man with the withered hand: 

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal the man on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

The reverend had gone on to speak of Jesus's disciples plucking the grain from the field on Sabbath. How they had only been hungry. Not that they were doing any labor. How the Pharisees had been cold and closed off to them and looking for anything to accuse Jesus of. Though the Pharisees seemed to believe they were much more pleasing to God, which in their own way was hypocritical of them in the first place to believe so. Doesn't God show mercy?

This is when things got a bit foggy, because my emotions came flooding in. Tears couldn't stop falling from my eyes. I was doing the best I could to try to cover them up. It was a useless task. He was talking about the softening of hearts. Hearts that were made of stone. Or rather, hearts that had become stone over time through all of the pain and suffering they experienced. An instinctual defense mechanism. And we wonder why we feel so heavy.

All of those voices came flooding through again. "Embody love." "Let go." "Forgive." "Open your heart." And now a new voice, "Soften your heart." In an instant I had gone through how unmovable I had been with this situation. Though I had reason to be, in instinctual protection of myself and my son, I had trapped myself inside this prickly prison cell. Thinking that eventually, it would be the other who'd feel the pain from the needles every time I'd lean into them.

I, like the Pharisees, had been hypocritical in my defense of love and protection. Thinking my way was The Way. Yes, it was love and protection that was my aim. But it was a love and protection that could not reach the hearts in need of it as well. Though a bit defeating in feeling, I knew that I had come to a point where I realized that it wasn't in the other person that I needed to seek faith and forgiveness in. The only person you can count on truly, is yourself. Only you are in control of your own thoughts, emotions, and reactions to things. Beyond that, what can you really do?

I could keep my heart heavy in stone, sure. Keep myself stuck inside that painful prison of fear, anxiety, and stubbornness. And maybe that would negatively affect the other person in some sort of painful way. Maybe I'd see it as a form of protection for myself and my son. Like I was doing the right thing. But it would be such a heavy weight to carry for something that wasn't even of my own doing. Something that, ultimately, I had no control of. There was no seeing into the true reality of the future I wanted or expected from this Release. 

So what else was there to do but to just let it go. To soften my heart. To embody the love I wish had been shown. I needed to surrender and let be what will be. I needed to allow God to give me that Release and freedom I needed. Not the one I wanted. And you would think that would piss me off! But really, it took so much heaviness off. There was no more prison I was keeping myself trapped in, hoping it would hurt the other person.

I cried and cried. And yeah, people stared. They smiled in care. Not concern or pity. I had been blessed twice that day by the reverend. And I had a lovely woman sit and pray with me, hand in hand, while I cried. I felt embraced, not just by the community, but also by myself and by God and whoever's voices it was that had been nagging at me for so long.

That evening, the evening I had been dreading up until that morning, was another weight lifted. Speaking one on one to the person I hadn't spoken to for almost a year, to the person who had abandoned me and his son, was in some crazy way...healing. He spoke his words and what he needed to show for himself. And I decided to be soft. Open. I decided to have faith. Not necessarily in him, but more so in the journey. I knew that I was only in control of myself. That he was going to do what he was going to do no matter what. And I couldn't control that. But I could let it go and leave it up to God.

Maybe this person chatting in front of me had grown. Shifted. For the better as he said. Who am I to say?

It made me realize that, at the river and of all the times I had begged and prayed for Release from the past and of the people in it that had hurt me and my family, was granted. Just not in the way I ever expected. Maybe when we ask for the bad people to go away, they leave themselves too? Like, the "bad" is no longer with them. They are transformed, therefore, no longer capable of the harm. So, are they truly the same person you were praying for to leave your life?

I asked for Release. And I got it. I asked for freedom. And I got it. I asked for the bad people to leave my life and never return. And I got it. I was set free of the anxiety and burden of carrying that heart of stone around. I was released from the past and its pain through the self-work that was done through the other party and my acceptance of what was to what will be, knowing I can never be sure, and continuing my own self-work. Those dead branches that were no longer bearing any fruit had been pruned! But instead of expecting those spots where the dead branches were pruned to stay that way, new branches emerged healthier and ready to bear fruit.

These are the things that are hidden blessings. The ones we don't expect, yet they give us exactly what we asked for, in unexpected ways. And what I can do with that is to have gratitude, express it and transmute it into love, and have faith that everything is intended for reasons seen and unseen.

My heart may not be as soft as a rose just yet, but compared to the state it was in not so long ago, I think I'm making decent progress.