Not well-read, but very well-lived.
- P.S.
My pain is subsiding, finally. This has been a long, long flare.
I’m hopeful I’ve gotten a few more answers to what’s at the bottom of all this. Tightness everywhere. Tight hips, tight muscles, tight energy.
My parents move seems to be falling into place. This past week, the miracle packer that showed up. God, you show off. I established my boundaries then things opened up. I stopped trying to do it all, and then better things happened.
#easter
I watched Beyonce’s Homecoming film tonight on Netflix. There’s someone that’s sacrificed for her passion, her art, her vision. Incredible. Same week, Brene Brown’s Netflix special also dropped.
This afternoon, I had a massage then went to a spa w/ the Girlz to celebrate JoJo’s bday. Pampering.
Women this week. Power.
*****
What is my future? What is my power? What is my passion?
What was I doing before I got married? Before the anxiety started creeping in? Before the kids?
What happened during the time w/ the kids and growing the biz that I loved? That felt like me? That felt like a passion…
I haven’t felt like I could give myself the luxury to think or dream of the future when my body and mind have felt broken.
It seems that season is coming to an end.
I’ve gotten help along the way from dozens of people and a handful of providers that have helped heal my mind and body.
Then I got more serious about healing myself. I started to have a tiny glimmer of hope and enough energy to imagine being more disciplined, saying no to people and things, setting boundaries and priorities that put myself in front, not at the end of a day when my energy had run out.
I hope it doesn’t take forever to remember and rediscover my passions. In a few weeks, I’ll be 53. I refuse to believe it’s too late. I refuse to give up and start coordinating the rest of my life around lunch dates, weddings and birth announcements. I want to practice a craft. I want to help people. I want to feel my creative energies explored and brought into the world. I want to earn money.
Sometimes I’m still afraid. Sometimes I’m still a little too tired. But it’s coming.
It’s coming.
And I’ll be better for it. The world will be better for it.
*****
Lastly, went to a Tenebrae service tonight at a Methodist church. It looks like it took a lot of work to put together, but only a few people showed up. I was one of them.
It’s a service where the story of Jesus being tried and crucified is read. Then candles are extinguished until the sanctuary is dark.
It reminded me of how deep the story of Jesus is in my life. I sat later on the back porch and thought about it while smoking and sipping some gin.
Jesus, the real Jesus, the Jesus that went to the cross for being an activist and defying the system, Jesus has been my north star.
Jesus and the life he led, what he taught, the way he lived and treated people, that Jesus has been my guiding light, the orientation of how to live, how to be different in a crazy world, a world that has always been crazy and full of beauty both.
You don’t have to love or believe Jesus was God or a god. What he taught and how he lived, I believe, helps you access deeper consciousness within ourselves. It connects you to a sacred energy that runs through all that is beautiful in the world.
Jesus isn’t the only one who lived and taught that way, but he set a high bar and said and did crazy things that changed the world. Jesus gave me hope to live differently and I have and it’s produced a beautiful life.
I see people with nothing to orient themselves to. Many of us don’t have great families. We’re not satisfied with work right now, maybe our relationships, maybe alot of what’s happening in life. Pretty much everyone will feel all of those things at some point in their life. What do you do then?
I’ve felt all that too and Jesus doesn’t sweep in and clean it up. Your true self and the spirit inside you are guides. Jesus’ life was supposed to be a guide, a star, a light, a transition point. That’s what it can be.
So this story reminded me of what he taught on forgiveness, and it hit me in a new way. This year, it reminded me of all I’ve gone through with my parents and family. The exhaustion and the frustration and the hurt. It reminded me that God has felt that and dealt with it by dying to it all and in dying, moved on and moved the conversation.
They thought he died, but his death and the life after that changed how systems can function. It gave people power. It gave them energy to keep fighting. It gave them hope. All those things, are dangerous to systems. Systems fall and people on the ground make them fall.
So what does forgiveness and dying look like to me in the situation w/ my family? What I’ve done. I died to making this work out right for my parents. I died to my ability to control. I died and let others step in and let me stop trying to save everyone. Jesus died and believed somehow, that saves people more than staying alive would have.
So die, allright?
Die to believing you’re more important or necessary than God himself.
And let passion fill you for your own life.