Tag: Self discovery

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Acceptance is messy

by DeniseLeave a Comment on Acceptance is messy

Focus on what you have. Stop wishing for what you don’t. Be grateful for friends to laugh with, children to be proud of, and a partner to love. Accentuate the positive. Breathe in gratitude. Breathe out compassion.

IMG_0192Accept what IS. Release all expectations.

But today is grey. Today is heavy. Today is a wool sock, and sweatpants wrapped in an old quilt kind of day.

Today is sixty-four degrees and cloudy. Today I don’t have the energy to be a happy person, grateful and optimistic. Today my glass feels half empty and the trees are obscuring my view of the forest.

I’ve made my share of lemonade from life’s lemons and I mastered turning my frowns upside down at an early age. I was taught to dry my eyes, fix my make-up and show up with a smile.

I know how to look past stiff hugs, cold shoulders, dismissive comments, criticism disguised as humor, and long periods of silence. I can make excuses for others and believe the best even when their worst smacks me square in the face.

But I don’t know how to do hopeless. Hopeless is the toughest place to be for an optimist. I don’t do ‘give up’ very well.

For me, hopeless is Hell, a spiritual realm of suffering, allowing someone else’s action or lack of action to affect your wellbeing and peace. This is wanting desperately for someone to love you the way you want to be loved but knowing they never will. This is realizing that family is not synonymous with unconditional love, but loving them anyway. This is facing the fact that some people are okay without you in their lives and nothing you do or say will change that but showing up anyway. It’s finally learning that you can’t love enough for both sides no matter how hard you try but trying anyway. This is someone misunderstanding your heart but opening it wider anyway. It’s realizing that this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

Resisting the feeling of hopelessness gives power to the feeling. What you resist will persist. Sometimes sinking into it, allowing the heart to grieve, the Soul to cry, and the body to curl up for a day is necessary to move through the Hell to the other side.

Perhaps peace comes not only from accepting the situation as it IS, but from also acknowledging that acceptance doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes acceptance hurts. Forgiveness can be lonely and peace can feel empty.

Acceptance is walking through the Hell authentically and it can look unshowered, unshaven, and messy. Acceptance isn’t always pretty and strong, but you are God’s highest form of creation and you are okay.

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At the Center of my Being

by DeniseLeave a Comment on At the Center of my Being

I wonder if this is one of those moments that I’ve read about, a time when a person is faced with a choice that could potentially change the course of their life.  There is the path of short-term security that would put money in the bank for bills or there is the path toward loftier goals.

How do I choose now when I feel so overwhelmed by everything?  Is it even possible to make a good decision when I feel like I can’t think straight at all?  I feel the stress of monthly bills that linger long after the income has been depleted.  Depending on someone else to put money in the bank is another level of stress that I didn’t anticipate. The feeling that someone else controls this aspect of my life is suffocating.

Taking the position of Nanny for a new baby would give me the extra money that I need to feel a bit safer.  The hours are not ideal but I could probably make it work.  It would mean putting my career on the slow track and having less time with my boys.  Just writing that makes me sad.  So is that my answer?  Is that immediate feeling what I am supposed to listen to?  Is this my inner voice telling me not to settle?

The alternative is to stick with this new career, to dedicate myself to making it work with an even fiercer determination than what I have already made.  There is more that I can do.  I know that.  I can work harder to cut expenses at home until I begin to make money.  Cutting expenses doesn’t take me away from the boys and it doesn’t sacrifice my time at work.  I love my job.  I love the people I work with, the hours that are flexible, and the potential I see.  I love me when I am working.  Just writing this makes me smile.  Is this my answer?

Sacrificing what I love in order to make money now would feel like giving up on myself.  If I don’t believe in me, who is going to?  Every little part of this life I am creating is scary.  It is all new, the unconscious feelings I have that are beginning to surface, the coping strategies that are becoming second nature, and the strength I didn’t know I possessed.  I’m learning to trust my Self.  I have everything I need within me to create this life I envision.  I don’t have to settle for doing less than what I know I can do.

For the past week I have had a quote posted on my wall.  “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”  -lao tzu

Of course,

that is my answer.