Author Archives: Mary

My Struggle to Surrender – Part II

Back in December I wrote a post about surrender – specifically My Struggle to Surrender – and I promised to get back to you about what I was learning and working on. So much has happened since then and it feels like December was a year ago rather than just three and half months. Recently I have begun to write about surrender in a whole new way and I want to share that here soon. Before I do that I thought it may be worth posting the writing I had all but finished back in December as Part Two to the original surrender post.

You may remember that I was reflecting on the space of surrender – the allowance of all of my emotions, all of the time….

I could pick up the pace, I could go to the place where I let my emotions lead, where I let myself become a teary mess for days at a time, I could surrender. This is the most rapid way to change and grow. I know intellectually that this is the better way and yet I don’t trust God enough that I will survive the tumble over the cliff; I don’t believe that I can do it.

Yeshua is helping me so much with this issue and I want to share with you some of my discoveries about my blocks and the tools that are helping me with this issue.

The Things I do to Avoid Surrender
Usually I do one of two things. The first thing I call ‘Toughing it out’. This is where I tell myself things like: ‘well I just have to feel this, this is the only way to grow, I’m just being an idiot, God made me to be able to do this, I’m just going to push on’ I try to force myself over the edge. I get all rigid and try to survive it all rather than feel it all. And, no surprises here, I don’t end up feeling very much at all.
The second thing I do – lets call it ‘Sulking it out’ – is more like ‘I can’t do this on my own, AJ can I have a cuddle?, I think I’ll have a cup of tea, maybe some chocolate, I just want to watch a nice movie’ i.e. I become needy, I seek comfort, I feel I will be able to cope if I just feel a little better.
In both cases I am avoiding my true grief, I am avoiding the place of surrender, of overwhelm. I am either ‘toughing it out’ and shutting down my vulnerability or I am ‘sulking it out’ and looking for external things to help me avoid my feelings.
Fear Stops Surrender
I know intellectually that experiencing my pain will lead to healing and growth. So why am I so afraid??
I must have a false belief about what it will be to surrender emotionally. So lets call this belief or set of beliefs my ‘block’, the thing that blocks me feeling everything all of the time. The belief must be false because God created me to be able to cope with all of my emotions.
So what are my biggest fears and false beliefs about surrender?
  1. I can’t cope with the emotion
  2. I will be completely out of control if I surrender to this emotion
  3. I will feel crazy, I will look crazy to others, others will laugh at me, or condescend to me
These huge beliefs inside of me have their origins in things I learned in childhood through my early experiences and the way my parents viewed emotions.
Its no surprise, given the state of our world, that my parents themselves have fear of their own emotions. In my childhood they treated themselves most of the time in the way I usually resort to i.e. they ‘toughed it out’. Instead of having a good cry, they taught me to get on with life and that it was foolish to spend too much time feeling sorrow or grief. So I learnt that I could feel grief for a little while but after that I was feeling sorry for myself.
I also come from a family where ‘making fun’ of others or paying a person out for their idiosyncrasies is considered good natured and normal. This is the culture in one side of my extended family. Cruel sentiments, condescension and ridicule were often dressed up as ‘having a joke’. As a kid I was labelled a ‘drama queen’ because I was so expressive and often emotional. Growing up that made me feel ashamed of my emotions, I learned to not be so ‘sensitive’ and I become a ‘joker’ too. As an adult I now have the belief that if I’m overly emotional I will be made fun of or condescended to.
Also, my parents, because they feel afraid of their own sorrow, find it hard to allow it in their children. They felt completely powerless and distressed if I was inconsolably sad as a child. They hugged and ‘comforted’ me at the first sign of tears. So little me, instead of getting the message, ‘Its OK to have a good cry, you can handle it and in fact you will feel a whole lot better when you do. Just come and see us when you’re done’ came to believe ‘Crying is scary, I need someone with me, I can’t cope with my emotions’
So, all of these early messages about emotion, have resulted in me have never having had the experience of just submitting to big emotions and the entire process is now shrouded in fear. I now feel weak, crazy, out of control and like I can’t cope when I have large emotions.
So what do I do?
Understanding all of these early messages helps me see my blocks a little more clearly.
I can feel frustrated that my parents didn’t encourage my tears but that doesn’t get me anywhere. They have their own fears and blocks to work through and blaming them and being a victim still doesn’t release the blocks that are now a part of me.
However connecting to the pain of these early memories and releasing it, reduces and eliminates my fear of those things happening again. If I have grieved being judged for being expressive and emotional I will no longer fear it. I will have worked through the emotion and know that feeling myself is worth it and if people try to make me feel small for crying it won’t effect me.
I can also enlist the help of my intellect to help me begin to challenge the false beliefs. One of the problems I have and see many people having is that we tend to ‘live in’ the emotion; we keep resisting the feeling of it and instead tell it to ourselves as a truth. I can remind myself that the feeling ‘I can’t cope’ is not the Truth, it is JUST AN EMOTION.
In fact the only way I am going to release this block is to stop believing it is the truth. The Truth is actually that;
–        God created me to cope with all of my emotions.
–        That when I feel everything I am actually most connected to myself and therefore the most in control.
–        That its not crazy to feel the emotions that are already there inside of me
When I live in the feeling ‘I can’t cope’ I actually use it as a way to control my feelings, the other alternative is to experience ‘I can’t cope’ as an expression of grief. This is the key to releasing the block.
For example yesterday when I was writing my first ever blog post I was full of fear. I was sitting at the computer typing away and every now and then I would be hit by huge feelings of terror of exposure and rejection and I would begin to feel ‘I can’t cope’. At that point I would go rigid, get up from the computer and go and do something else. My experience of ‘I can’t cope’ was almost angry; I was telling it to myself as a truth and it was a way to control my feelings.
If I had been releasing my block, I would have been typing away, felt overwhelmed and softened. I would have sat and sobbed out all of the feelings of ‘I’m just not up to this, this is all too much, I feel like I can’t cope’. My block would have been released from me as an expression of grief.
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Have a great week everyone. I’ll be back sometime to finish my musing on surrender!

These days Yeshua and I are enjoying the beginning of learning teams, listening and watching as some of you express and step into desire and we’re busy planning trips in the coming months. The autumn days are full of spectacular light and I’m feeling a quiet joy at just being together and loving God.

Blessings to you,

Mary

Welcoming Sorrow, Honouring Self

About a week ago I had a series of realisations. Like a mini power point presentation in my soul, every couple of hours ponderings in my heart, snippets of discussions with Jesus or pages I had read or written would coalesce and God would download another whopping ‘Truth Slide’ for my soul to tremble at.

Below is the list of my ‘Truth Slides’. I can’t programme html to save myself so they appear as numbered points but if you can imagine God gave them to me in this really cool cascading flow chart, every couple of hours the next slide would appear and I could feel how it snugly related to the previous one.

1. I have never really loved anyone. I have always been in addictions in close relationships.

(Do you sort of get to feel why I needed a couple of hours before the next slide?)

2. I am in almost complete denial of my true self. I have squashed my true self and all of my feelings into   a tiny ball in a dark corner of my soul. Every now and then when she tries to appear I (judge) stamp on her to make her more squished and tiny. My true self is full of sorrow

3. My inauthentic self, created to get approval and avoid my sadness is not content, confident or able to love authentically because she is created through addiction. She is needy by nature.

4. If I want to know and accept my true self I must be willing to accept her sorrow. She is full of pain. I want to reject pain but now I realise that pain is a large part of the real me. I can’t know me unless I let my grief be present and tell its story. In order to know myself I must open my arms and welcome pain.

5. Allowing my sorrow will not only connect me with my true self but it will bring about my healing. Even in my sorrow I will be able to love and give authentically because I will have reached an authentic place within myself.

6. My authentic self knows and desires her Soulmate (my inauthentic self stresses about not desiring or knowing – this is just an effect emotion) My authentic self knows what she wants and what is good for her.

In the wake of the God engineered slide show in my soul I have this to say.

We tell ourselves that the adult, invented self is strong and the protector, that the child within is weak and needs protection. In fact it is the child within that holds the wisdom, she is the one connected with her emotions, the emotions that make us sensitive to what is good, safe and wise for our well-being and happiness. Our denial of the painful feelings, created when we were harmed, suppressed, bullied or disrespected as children, desensitizes us to the passion, creativity, surety, desire and heart-trust that is innate to our fully feeling selves.

We must welcome our pains in order to know our desires. We have been taught to trust our minds and rationality (and look where it’s got us: sick, divorced, overweight, discontented, dissatisfied, unsure, cynical and mistrusting). If we can find the scrunched up part inside that holds our true self, full of pain; if we can sit with it and ask it to expand, to stretch out into the fullness of our being we will feel its pain and loneliness. We will feel its fears and losses but we also will for the first time in so long be feeling our true selves and there is so much power in a person connected to themselves. This feeling creature that we were created to be, is also aware and connected to everything around it. It feels nature, it feels others, it allows its own feelings and as a result it knows what it wants! If we desire Love and God from this space the potentials for peace, joy and fulfillment are no longer even potentials – they become realities.

The key for me is to begin to view my pain as something different to ‘bad’, ‘the unpleasant part’, the ‘please can I get it over and done with’ thing that I have to do. I want to love me and that means loving my pain because it is a part of me right now. In fact it tells my story, by allowing my pain I am honouring my story, I am coming to know the complete me. By judging and avoiding my pain I am judging the largest part of me (largest for now). I am saying to the real me ‘you are unpleasant’, ‘I wish you weren’t there’, ‘you make my life hard and miserable’.

The starker truth I have come to face is that I, the manufactured me, have made my life unpleasant and miserable and the more I fight the real me, the more miserable I become. I have blamed ‘real me – full of pain’ for unhappiness only to realise now that allowing ‘real me – full of pain’ unlocks my joy and even during the feeling of my pain she, the real me, has the capacity to love, to make decisions, to create and connect with others.

We must change our attitudes to pain. We must desire not only God but ourselves – and if our true selves come clad in pain, abuse, loss or fear we must welcome them and let their grief tell our story, for ultimately they will become our greatest teachers, they will instruct us in love. They have lived so long without it, they have felt the absence of it so acutely that, when we allow them, our darker feelings will give us knowing and make us hyper-aware of what it loving and what is not.

God, of course, will be our constant companion but at present so many of us invite Him from our inauthentic selves. We say “God, come sit for a while, come for tea and I’ll show you my best self, we won’t talk about that scrunched up part of me in the distant, dark corner down the hall because, frankly, she bothers me. I wish you would just clear her out of here, take her off my hands.”

And all God can do is smile gently and try to have us hear His response “But my beloved, this part is you and I love her so much. My Arms of Love long to embrace her – if only you would embrace her yourself.”

Humility Study Notes

Many of you who have spoken to me recently would know that I am really working at the moment with willingness towards true humility. I am praying constantly for ‘the awakening’ of my true soul condition that allows our God connection. I feel passionate about it. The reason being that, as I step into this process I have found that, what I thought would feel humiliating actually feels wholly liberating and what I thought would make me unlovable to everyone (i.e. owning and sharing all my imperfections) has actually opened me to feeling more authentic and I have received the most awesome gift – the beginning of a connection with God. 

As I began to pray and desire this process I found a book (which I also mentioned in my last post) called Brokenness: The Heart God Revives by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. The list I have pasted below has been adapted by me from a chapter in the book. I have it printed out and incorporate into my daily prayer time most days now.  Some of the words in the prayer that I have written that follows the list use a concept that Nancy refers to in the book i.e. (my paraphrase here) in order to be truly ‘broken’ or humble we must learn to become humble with others, walls down, as well as with God, roof off.

For those who attend the Wednesday group at the Wilkesdale Learning Centre we agreed yesterday to discuss the list at next weeks meeting. I’m posting it here so that everyone may have the chance to read it before then.
By the way if you have never attended this group everyone is welcome. It starts at 10.30am.

I’ve enjoyed being present with you all the past couple of weeks and I’m excited to think that we all may grow and share in humility.

Love to all,
Mary

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The following list has been adapted from the book:
Brokenness: The Heart God Revives

Humility & Pride
Proud people focus on the failures of others.
Humble people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need.
Proud people have a critical, fault-finding spirit; they look at everyone else’s faults with a microscope but their own with a telescope.
Humble people are compassionate; they forgive much because they know how much they have been forgiven.
Proud people are self-righteous; they look down on others.
Humble people esteem all others. They have faith in the potential for good in others.
Proud people have an independent, self-sufficient spirit.
*Humble people have a dependent spirit; they recognize their need for God. They value gifts from God and from others. They do not resist giving God or others credit for the wisdom or gifts they have given them.
Proud people have to prove that they are right.
Humble people are willing to yield the right to be right.
Proud people claim rights; they have a demanding spirit.
Humble people yield their rights; they have a meek spirit.
Proud people are self-protective of their time, their rights, and their reputation.
*Humble people are able to love themselves. They do not DEMAND attention or love out of lack or fear. They do not value themselves above others.
Proud people desire to be served.
Humble people are motivated to serve others.
Proud people desire to be a success.
Humble people are motivated to be faithful and to make others a success.
Proud people desire self-advancement.
*Humble people desire to promote love and God.
Proud people have a drive to be recognized and appreciated.
*Humble people recognise their relationship with God is their primary relationship. They are humble to feelings of unworthiness and sensitive to when they may be becoming arrogant.
Proud people are wounded when others are promoted and they are overlooked.
*Humble people are eager for others to get the credit; they rejoice when others are lifted up. They are humble to their feelings if overlooked and turn to God with these feelings.
                                          
Proud people have a subconscious feeling, “This ministry/church is privileged to have me and my gifts”; they think of what they can do for God.
*Humble people know that the true way to teach or ‘minister’ is through humility and demonstration of God’s Grace. They are not afraid to expose their true selves. They realise what God does for them in every moment, especially when teaching others. They recognise all Truth comes from God.
Proud people feel confident in how much they know.
Humble people are humbled by how very much they have to learn.
Proud people are self-conscious.
Humble people are not pre-occupied with what others think of them.
Proud people keep others at arms’ length.
Humble people are willing to risk getting close to others and to take risks of loving intimately.
Proud people are quick to blame others.
Humble people accept personal responsibility and can see where they are wrong in a situation.
Proud people are unapproachable or defensive when criticized.
Humble people receive criticism with a humble, open spirit.
Proud people become bitter and resentful when they are wronged; they have emotional temper tantrums; they hold others hostage and are easily offended; they carry grudges and keep a record of other’s wrongs
Humble people give thanks in all things; they are quick to forgive those that wrong them.
Proud people are concerned with being respectable, with what others think; they work to protect their own image and reputation.
Humble people are concerned with being real; what matters to them is not what others think but what God knows; they are willing to die to their own reputation.
Proud people find it difficult to share their spiritual need with others.
Humble people are willing to be open and transparent with others as God directs.
Proud people want to be sure that no one finds out when they have sinned; their instinct is to cover up.
Humble people, once Humble, don’t care who knows or who finds out; they are willing to be exposed because they have nothing to lose.
Proud people have a hard time saying, “I was wrong; will you please forgive me?”
*Humble people are quick to admit failure, to feel the cause of their unlovingness and to seek forgiveness when necessary.
Proud people tend to deal in generalities when confessing sin.
Humble people are able to acknowledge specifics when confessing their sin.
Proud people are concerned about the consequences of their sin.
Humble people are grieved over the cause, the root of their sin.
Proud people are remorseful over their sin, sorry that they got found out or caught.
Humble people are truly, genuinely repentant over their sin, evidenced in the fact that they forsake that sin.
Proud people wait for the other to come and ask forgiveness when there is a misunderstanding or conflict in a relationship.
*Humble people take the initiative to be reconciled when there is misunderstanding or conflict in relationships. They are loyal to the principles of love and truth first and always and do not allow pride to prevent them from admitting a transgression.
Proud people compare themselves with others and feel worthy of honour.
Humble people compare themselves to the holiness of God and feel a desperate need for His mercy.
Proud people are blind to their true heart condition.
*Humble people walk in the light – they fully face their true condition and reach out to God from that space.
Proud people don’t think they have anything to repent of.
Humble people realize they have need of a continual heart attitude of repentance.
Proud people don’t think they need revival, but they are sure that everyone else does.
Humble people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God and for a fresh filling of His Spirit.

List adapted from http://www.reviveourhearts.com/pdf/uploads/TheHeartGodRevives.pdf
Notes with * beside have been altered from the original text by me. The word broken and brokenness has been replaced with humble throughout.
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“God please help me to be Humble before you today and everyday. Teach me to live with the walls down and the roof off.
I desire to be near you and to bring glory to you. Help me to be humble to my failings and pain so that I may never cultivate addiction and instead live in the shadow of your love every hour and moment of my life.”

A Book List

So I read a lot these days. I always used to as a child and teenager, then I went to university and it all but killed my joy in reading and writing. I used to write a lot as well – poems and stories – in notebooks and on scraps of paper. I’d be out walking and inspiration would hit me. Weeks or months later on I might find a poem scrawled in the borders of a National Parks walking map or a scrunched up serviette. I used to copy down the words of others as well, quotes and phrases, and paste them up all around the house, especially in the loo! My Mum and Dad used to laugh good naturedly at all my ‘inspirations and sayings’ hanging about our home.

Lately I rediscovered my passion for reading and writing (and for God and Love). I think the first two are a by product of the last two! Reaching for God and for Love again has brought me closer to the more pure me (don’t you love how that works?)

Anyway down to the point of my post today – I wanted to share with you some books and blog posts that I have read and that I find inspiring. I want to clarify that just because I’ve included a book or a blog doesn’t mean that it necessarily upholds the teachings of the Divine Love Path. Each title is on the list because it moved me, and nurtured my growth in some way. I found when I began to pray for guidance and truth more sincerely I was led to certain books at times when they were most beneficial to me. Can I suggest that if you plan to read any of the books below that you let yourself be guided to particular ones? I feel they will resonate or move each of us in different ways at different times.

So while I don’t necessarily endorse the views on God or emotions that are expressed in all of these books, I do want to honour every single author, their courage, their vulnerability and their gifts. Oh how I wish I could express myself in the perfect simplicity of some of these authors! (By the way, I’ve been cruising some blogs lately and I gather that, for the main part, the way to be a chic, informative, and appealing blogger is to keep it succinct. I apologise to you all – I do not possess this knack. Maybe it’ll come back to me as I get closer to God. I am, as yet, so verbose!)

Also I’ve added hyperlinks for most titles in case you want more information on the book i.e. publisher, ISBN etc.

Relationship With God

The Padgett Messages (available at www.divinetruth.com or here)

There is just so much wisdom and truth in these pages. Each time I return to them I find more and more to ponder and feel about. Truly food for my soul.

My feelings about the Padgett Messages haven’t always been like this. To be honest when I first went to read them I found it difficult.It all seemed very repetitious and my concentration often drifted. Recently I have returned to them with a passion and find every message rich with meaning and emotion. It’s like I’m reading a different text. The truth is I’m reading with a different heart! If you are struggling with the messages can I suggest something that got me restarted in reading them with gusto? I picked up the Little Book of Truths and just read a few short excerpts at a time. I prayed both before and after each message and sat with my journal and asked God to help me understand the true depth of meaning in the message. It really worked for me.

What’s So Amazing About Grace by Phillip Yancey

Its. Just. Awesome!

The Shack by W.M. Paul Young

I read this book quite a while ago and it really helped me to open my heart to an emotional connection with God.

Brokenness: The Heart God Revives by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Through the Mists by Robert J. Lees

Emotions

Healing Through The Dark Emotions by Miriam Greenspan

I have to confess that I am only half way through the first chapter of this book! The fact that I have already put the title on this list should attest to how enthusiastic I feel about it. Similar to when I discovered Alice Miller its refreshing to feel that someone else out there is telling some truth. Its truth that AJ & I talk about all the time but in my stuck times I find that just the reading of such books is supportive and encouraging.

The Heart of the Soul by Gary Zukav & Linda Francis

I found the chapters ‘Boredom’ & ‘Pleasing’ especially relevant to my life.

Feel the Fear… and do it anyway by Susan Jeffers

The strategies Susan outlines for dealing with fear are very much Natural Love techniques and I have not applied any of them – however what Susan states about the nature of fear and how it controls our life really helped me.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

Brokenness: The Heart God Revives by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

I’m really in love with this book at the moment. I’m not entirely in love with the concept within it that love = self sacrifice but I do feel there is a lot to be gained in taking a look at our pride and demanding attitudes that are not qualities of love. The concept of brokenness before God and others is something I pray about daily.

Loss of a Loved One

I Will Carry You by Angie Smith
I cried on nearly every page of this book. The themes trigger very personal things for myself but apart from that Angie is a gifted and vulnerable writer. 
 

After You – Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father by Natascha McElhone

Soulmate Relationship & Sexuality

Are You The One For Me? by Barbara De Angelis
For me the really valuable thing about this book was the insight it gave me into the addictions I have had with men in previous relationships and how willing I have been to overlook simple issues of love.

Female Chauvinist Pigs – Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy

Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot: Not Your Mother’s Orgasm Book! by Deborah Sundahl

Eh hemm.. so I want to clearly state that I DO NOT ENDORSE EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK! Specifically I do not agree with the practices of seeing ‘sex therapists’. I do however agree that our vaginas (for those of us who have them!) store much emotion and connecting to these emotions brings about healing and increased sexual function. Some of what Deborah shares I found to be very relevant to my ongoing sexual healing.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

Family Relationships & Childhood Emotions  

The Drama of Being a Child (previously publishes as The Drama of the Gifted Child) by Alice Miller

Other Alice Miller Titles:    The Body Never Lies
                                          The Truth Will Set You Free
                                          Thou Shall Not Be Aware
I think many of you have heard me speak, write or recommend Alice Miller enthusiastically – enough said – she’s brilliant.

Toxic Parents by Susan Forward

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Karyl McBride

Well worth the read with some excellent emotion focused activities in the back of the book that can help anyone explore their relationship with their mother.

Homecoming – Reclaiming and Championing your Inner Child by John Bradshaw

Spirit Life

Thirty Years Among The Dead by Carl Wickland – Unpublished – Free Download @ www.divinetruth.com

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Practicing Love

Radical Hospitality by Father Daniel Homan & Lonni Collins

I love this book! Its not about nice meals and fancy linen – its about hospitality that extends to all strangers and originates in the heart.

Helping Kids with Emotions &/or Relationship with God

‘When I’m Feeling…’  Book Series written and illustrated by Trace Moroney

 

If you are interested in books you may like to bookmark this page as I will update this post on an ongoing basis.

Happy Monday everyone,

Love

Mary




How To Hold a Dream

We live in a culture that regularly scorns innocence, passion and vulnerability. All too often we ‘water down’ our true selves in favour of a version of self that suits the cynical and image-focussed landscape in which we live. We are taught to view the preciousness of our childhood dreams and creativity as childish, as too idealistic and unrealistic. [1]
I was taught early that my extremely emotional and expressive self was befuddling and bemusing to my parents. I learnt to be ashamed of this part of myself.
My huge desire to make the world a better place, to extend love to others and change lives for the better, I relegated to an idealistic pipe dream after spending ten years working in our health system and over two years in the Middle East. I came to believe that to be worldly was to face the harsh facts that the world is irretrievably messed-up, that lasting change and peace is a naïve concept. I learnt to judge and be angry instead of grieve the suffering I saw everywhere I went.
When Yeshua began work on the constitution for God’s Way of Love Organisation and as we began to talk about our future vision I had to face how much disillusionment I still carry about the way our world works and how resolute I feel so many of us still are in our decision to deny God and love, to judge our childlike selves and to stifle our creativity in favour of ‘fitting in’.
It seems that to truly embody this vision of ours I must have the courage to grieve my feelings of hopelessness, my belief that the world can’t change. This conviction of mine comes not only from my experiences in the past 30 years but has its roots in a time when a great dream was lost, when Light living in one man was extinguished through murder and a group of people grieved deeply that the presence of God’s Love on earth was so brief. It lived on only in a few of us, and to a much lesser degree. Our devastation was complete and my loss threatened my will to live, my faith and my hope. It broke my heart in a way that now it seems cleaved in two. The wound is covered over by scar tissue and yet underneath is still raw and weeping and excruciating to touch.
To make way for hope and creativity, I must grieve my loss and I must also cease to regard my childlike self in the way that my parents and environment taught me to. We learn to treat ourselves harshly and with reserve to avoid the pain of our wonder, excitement and imagination being stifled and judged by others. We reject ourselves so that we do not feel the grief of how rejected we were by others in our innocent state.
Our tears will free the sparkling children, full of wonder, big ideas and dreams, who are still waiting there within us. We can all learn to be trusting children again – only this time we can come to rely on a God of Love who accepts us as we are and delights in our childlike inventiveness and wonder.
When I consider God’s Way of Love as a vehicle for me (and all of us) to reconnect to this state; as a place that will welcome our tears at past dreams dashed, and teach us to hope again with vulnerable hearts no longer afraid of loss, I am moved beyond words.
I quietly tremble and let my heart release its fear. I allow the tears of my past Great Loss.
In order to hold our dream in my heart I must repair my faith and trust once again in the power, patience and endurance of Love. I must let my tears flow and allow their tracks to create pathways, passageways that may deepen and lead me back to my excitement, spontaneity and creativity.
May the passage of all our tears teach us the wisdom of letting go of expectations and control. May it rebuild in us strong roads of faith, faith in the unfailing strength our Father and the unending generosity of our Mother.
May God bless the beautiful child within you today,

Mary

[1] Emily writes cool stuff about this here & here

Little Seed

Anna and I shared a beautiful conversation on Tuesday. Between her planting and me processing we happened upon a magic window in which we talked about letting go of being the ‘good girl that everyone approves of’, our fears of feeling alone, and how much we love God. I received this message from her today and I thought it too beautiful not to pass on.
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Hi Mary,
I had a nice time talking to you yesterday.  I know you’re probably really busy, but I wanted to share this with you, as it’s kind of an extension to what we were talking about.
Last night after I got home, I sat in the shed (all alone!) with the candles on, listening to Amy Grant.  And I prayed to God from the real place in my heart.  Prayed to Help me to want my self, my true self, despite the conflict this brings up inside of me.  Teach me to be brave, and return to my childhood vulnerability and humility.  To remain true to myself and to my relationship with you, no matter what anyone in the outside world thinks or feels or does. 
I cried as I connected back to the glory that I have come to know as God. 
But it’s not easy for me at the moment.  I have just begun to notice that most of the thoughts in my head are me looking at myself as I think another person see’s me.  I’m not connected to how I feel, I’m connected to what other people see and feel about me – really, how my parents felt and saw.  I’m constantly having to stop myself and try to block, then dig beneath these thoughts, to find my own humility. 
This morning I realised that the same addiction that is driving these thoughts (wanting people to see me as great, so then they will envy, or love me) is in play in my relationship with God.  For, in trying to present myself as more ‘loveable’ than I am, or feel, has meant that I cannot connect with neither myself or God, because I’m not really me. 
This brings me to my analogy about the seed that my spirit friends helped me to see this morning. 
I’m a seed.  A little seed.  Full of potential, but to say I am a tree yet, would be untruthful.  To see myself as me is vital, because I can’t grow if I’m trying hard to not be the little seed I am.  Rather than denying I’m a little seed, and proclaiming, “I’m a plant!  Can I’ve some Love now everyone!?”, it’s going “Hey God, I’m a little seed, and I want to grow, can you please help me grow?”
To grow, I must;
  1. Sit in the truth of who I am.
  1. Desire Love from this place (including learning to love myself, as a little seed)
  1. Release the false belief that to be loved I have to be a tall, impressive plant.
Just wanted to share that with you Mary.  I feel it’s going to be really important for my growth from here.
Hope you, and AJ are feeling good today. : )
Lots of Love,
Anna

Just Be True, The Third Sphere & I Heart God

A new day was just beginning and I, sitting on the floor of our ecotent, looking out on all the freshness, was reading the Padgett messages….

“Be true to yourself and you will soon be in God’s love and favour…”[1]

The message continued but I found myself drawn to these words. I scribbled them in my journal and kept reading.

Again I paused; I looked back to my journal and circled the first four words in the sentence. These are well worn words in our world, bandied about in all kinds of situations. But now here they were at the beginning of a sentence that Helen had impressed upon her beloved mate. There was something big there that I was missing. I could feel it. It was niggling at the edge of my understanding.

“Be true to yourself…” – no don’t brush these words aside as obvious for their true meaning is huge.

“Be true…” to what you feel right now, surrender to your emotion, embody it, allow it. Don’t act it out, or avoid, don’t analyze or understand it. Just be true.

It hits me, a dawning no less significant than the one unfolding around me.
To know God’s Love I must go to Him in Truth. Go to Him in the truth of what I feel, just be true…

Yes I know you’ve heard all this before. But have you really? I hadn’t understood it – in my marrow. I didn’t feel what it meant deep within me.

Lots of us have heard that we must be in truth to receive the Love but do we go to Him in our messiness and sorrow. How can He connect to us if we do not share ourselves with Him, and how can we relate to Him if we avoid the state of complete humility and honesty about our own selves?

In all of my talking, journaling, channelling, processing and yes, even blogging I’ve been missing the point. I’ve been seeking to figure out my feelings instead of just embodying them while I cry out to God for Love and Grace. This revelation of my own smug self reliance stings me. The sin as old as mankind itself, has kept me in its grips. In all of my struggles to free myself of emotional error I have overlooked the arrogance in the way I am approaching the entire process.

I’ve been trying to sort myself and my feelings out so that then God can Love me, (now this sounds ridiculous but only if I remember that God is a Loving Parent who accepts me just as I am, and I forget that most of the other people in my childhood wanted me to hold it together and sort things out, and they found me far more ‘loveable’ and adorable then).

I haven’t been asking God for Grace or for Love, for I haven’t believed myself worthy of such things. I’ve been asking for Him to help to me feel – pleading and needy sometimes. And yet I’ve been afraid of His Love and of truly opening my heart to share my feelings with Him.

I haven’t understood that I must use my will to feel and He will use His Will to ease my burden.

I realise now that in order to truly heal I must take my whole self to Him and say ‘Here I am, teach me to love myself just as I am. In this precious, imperfect moment of my existence show me I am worthy. Let me feel your Love.’

My fear and desperate desire for control has made me, in my heart (the place where true longing begins) resist His Love because of what it may dislodge in me. I have been guarding my worthlessness from Him.

**********

It occurs to me that this is the true transition to the third sphere, or some big step in love, where I stop trying to ‘figure out’ my emotion, and instead am just willing to surrender to it, whatever it is, and to trust God to heal me of it – through His process, not mine. It is the place in which I am willing to be, just be, in the truth of my emotions[2] (not my addictions) and to experience them, at all times.

It is vulnerability – the lesson of my year – that is required. It is saying to God  “I’m terribly afraid that you may reject me but I can’t do this without you. But in order to do it with you I’m going to have to share myself. I’m going to have to ask, really ask for your Love.”

“Man has a will to either accept or reject the Love of God, and until he exercises his will in a way to show that he wants that love, it will not be given him.”[3]

God, I haven’t wanted your Love. I’ve asked for guidance and for courage but I haven’t wanted Love.

I have paid lip service to your Love and haven’t yet yearned for it, in the way of a winsome, lovesick teenager, of a mother for her lost child, of a son for his absent father.. his Father.

I haven’t unlocked the desire that consumes a soul, that is in the heart beat behind every action, present with every word and flavours every minute.

I quake at the thought of unleashing my sheer, unadulterated longing, that my heart may run free and ‘into Your Arms of Love’.

Could I give you my heart God? All the lost and fragile pieces of me, could I offer them up to you? Could I want Your Love so much that I would face all fear and give up all my feeble attempts, these shameful human encounters where I try to earn approval and appreciation, all in an effort to find a substitute for the Love that would fulfill me complete.

In the early dawn, in my dawning, I realize that I have focused on the eradication of sin and error and neglected (because of unworthiness and fear of grief) the inflowing of God’s Love. And now I see that the fastest way to eradicate sin and error is to focus on the Love. The process of emotional, causal release will be the same but it will happen as a natural part of my relationship with God. It is sharing with God in complete humility that changes our soul. When we truly open ourselves God’s Love gives us courage to step into the depths of pain and She takes the cause from us. The gentle surgeon removes the barbs. It is a process with my Maker – not a trial I must endure before I can relate to Her.

It seems to me in our initial unraveling we do and perhaps we must, engage our intellect. God does seem to many of us a far off figure, shrouded in misconception borne of our upbringing and background. We cannot neglect the important work of unhooking from our re-framing and rethinking, and the breaking down of the addictions that have run our lives. This next step though is the substance of the teachings. All of the thrashing around beforehand is just us lost in the bush, trying to orientate ourselves. This realization is suddenly stepping into the clearing and seeing the luminous Path stretch out in front of us. We must each have our awakening of what is truly within us.. just be true.. and be willing to share this self with God.

‘…for until such an awakening comes to (the soul) there is no possibility of it receiving the Love of God into to it..’[4]

***********

“When we pray to the Father for an increase in faith, it is a prayer for the increase in Love”[5]

If  I block the Love, how can my faith grow?

It ALL depends on the Father’s Love.

I AM NOTHING WITHOUT HIS LOVE.

As I read my notes to Yeshua, he hastens to correct my last statement. It is not true that I am nothing without God’s Love. I can become God’s creation, perfected in natural love. I explain to him that when I wrote the statement I was feeling so acutely how limited I am without this relationship, how insignificant I now am compared to what I once was when His Love made me His child ‘in substance and not in image only’ In my moments of explaining its hard to contemplate how I could even grow in natural love without the Love of God.

And yet in the next breath, I feel the errors of the first human couple still alive within me – this searing, desperate attempt to prove that I am something and someone, on my own, of my own creation. The utter limitation of this state, of trying to have my ego prove its worth, overwhelms me. I’m locked in a futile struggle to prove my value, that blocks the most significant relationship of my life.

Even now, the idea that me, alone;

without doing good works,

without saying smart things,

without knowing,

without showing that I am worthy,

the idea that I am loved and am beautiful without any of these things is so alien. I feel I must make good before He (and he) can love me, before I show myself to Him.

And yet His Love will prove His Love for me.

But I must have humility and openness to receive it.

If I am needy or demanding I won’t receive it. My neediness is a plea that he make it easier so that I may avoid my darkest sorrow. My demand is anger and expectation that I should be able to avoid vulnerability and openness with Him. Instead I must ask ‘with sincere longings and earnest aspiration’, I must truly desire it and be willing to bare my whole self to Him, in recognition that:

“Man is a mere creature and cannot create anything higher than himself; so man cannot rise to the nature of the divine, unless the divine first comes into that man and makes him a part of its own divinity.”[6]

It’s not about saying “God help me feel….”

It is saying “God I feel….”

“God please be with me while I feel.”

“Could you show me your love so that I may have faith enough to step into the darkness?”

It is stopping trying and simply desiring – desiring God, desiring Love, desiring Truth, desiring emotion.

***********

So why am so I afraid to ignite my yearning for God and for Soulmate? So afraid that I hold myself back in the second sphere (and sometimes lets face it, right down in the lower first) – figuring out, analyzing, resisting surrender to the truth of what I feel….

The answer, the reason for my headstrong self-reliance, is that I don’t want to soften into the feelings that for nigh on 2000 years I have relied on a Father of Love. He has guided me. And the love of my mate has nourished me.

I can’t take the next steps until I acknowledge this – that my Mother God sustains me and that my mate, Yeshua, completes me.

I feel so nothing without them. And it feels that I must pass through this abyss of knowing that, feeling that nothing, in order to have them with me again.

I have missed them so much that it terrifies me to crack open the cache of my longing, and have all of my loneliness tumble out with it.

Oh God give me strength…

    dare I ask….   show me Love?

This is the narrow way.

It must be through a relationship with God. Until we have this we are not truly on the Path. We are bumbling along, preparing, removing our blocks, until we reach the point where we are ready to open ourselves to the greatest, most life-givng Love there is – until we are ready to enter a love relationship with our Creator.

I am humbled to admit to you this morning that I have been dallying all this time, on the Natural Love Path. Yes, I have felt and released some emotions and I have come to know the Father a little. But I am hit like a freight train by the understanding that my growth has been seriously stunted by my unwillingness to ‘ask in a way that shows I want His Love’.

My friends, we must learn what it means to ask Him.

To ask with our hearts,

our whole hearts,

our broken hearts,

our shameful hearts,

the parts of us that don’t feel whole because in Truth they lack

His Love.

We must unearth the parts of us left in the shadows and corners and forgotten caverns in our souls so that She may shine the light of Love and Truth upon them.

I saw a book advertised the other day. It is called ‘Made to Crave’ by Lysa Terkeurst. I haven’t read the book but the short blurb I read about it came back to me as I finished writing this post. I think I’ve gleaned her basic premise (apologies to Lysa If I’m wrong) It is this: We are all made to crave God and all of our other addictions with food, (and I would add with television, in relationships, in our work etc, etc), are just distractions and a poor substitute for the Love we crave the most.

If we want to know God, to receive Her Love, we must open up to our craving and know it for what it is. When we do this our addictions will become unsatisfying and meager in comparison to what awaits us. And this craving and desire will inspire us to face our fears, to face our true selves and expose them to the One who Loves the most. When we do, God in all Her Grace, will clean us and teach us Love.

[1] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Helen Padgett, November 30th, 1914

[2] I want to make a clear distinction here between living in or allowing our emotions and living in addictive emotions. The first is healing, the second is damaging and even more damaging when we tell ourselves and others we are doing the first when we are in fact doing the second. I see many living in addictive emotions and crying non-causal feelings. While we live in addiction we cannot connect to our true emotional state.
[3] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Ann Rollins, December 12th, 1914
[4] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, October 10th, 1915
[5] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, March 2nd, 1916

[6] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, January 24th, 1915

A Poem to God

Could you love me God? Little me?
Could you love me THAT much?
Could I really become clean?
Help me find my true self, my desires,
Help me find the pathway through the dark,
Help me LOVE.
I want to love.
I want others to want your Love,
and to know its power ,
through seeing me change.
I am just a little girl, a little lost,
Bewildered by this BIG world I find myself in.
Help me touch my sorrow.
There is so much sadness
It feels knit into the fibres of my being.
Help me love the colour of my soul,
Just as it is,
Right now.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you,
There are no words for you.
I am just a little girl
with words, far too few
Help me find the words, the will,
to share your Glory.
How can I know you well?
I am humbled by You
Your presence makes me want to bow down for you,
How can I face you?
You know me so well and I feel shame,
How could you love me after knowing me?
I am so broken
and oh so little.
Help me have faith that I may heal.
Help me have courage
to stand on your doorstep
and knock on your door
Let me feel worthy enough
to ask….
to ask for your Love and your Wisdom.
I do not feel deserving of such things
I am little
and a lot broken.

Hey everyone, this is my first ‘Poem to God’

Last year when I ran the workshops one of the activities was for you all to write a Poem to God and it was always, inevitably my favourite part in every weekend. I loved watching you all shine as you shared your poems with each other. After the workshops some of you sent me your poems and I have them stored in a folder on my computer. Can I say I love them all. I cried as I read every single one of them. Each is as unique as the soul who created them. I find it one of the most precious things in the world to hear a heart call out to God, to want to talk to God.

It was a seed of a dream that one day someone, maybe Joseph (I have asked him yet!), may want to include some of your poetry in a publication. Who knows maybe someday we can do this…

A Fork in the Road & The Wounded Dog

A Fork in the Road

I’m passing through a season on this path where life seems difficult. In the past month I have come to confront some big residual addictions (that I found hidden below the obvious ones J). It’s felt tough and I’m still in it. Lots of my other avoidances – food, alcohol, anger, running away etc – all seemed easy to give up compared to these. I am really attached to the feelings of being ‘Daddy’s little girl’ – it helps me avoid so much shame and worthlessness. It helps me avoid all the loss and longing for my Soulmate that feels so consuming I doubt my capacity to breathe if I submit to it. I really, really want to feel safe and protected – instead of feeling terrified of losing him, of being harmed, of people hating us.
In the past I’ve felt my passion to become more loving and closer to God has pulled me through so much processing. Often, even just realising my addictions, has helped me to begin to break them down. These last few weeks though, I’ve had to get brutally honest with myself. Just because I can see that this set of addictions prevent me from loving more completely and that they block my connection to my Father, doesn’t mean that I want to give them up. Facing my deepest unworthiness, my Soulmate grief and my terror feels like a task I am not up to yet.
The place I’m in feels harrowing. The roads divide before me – one path is the path to God and my dear, sweet mate. The other is a continuation of the well worn road of my life till now. It’s the road where I get to feel warm and fuzzy because people accept me and tell me “wow, you’re a great girl!” It is the road where I accommodate everyone else’s demands and desires because I don’t want to feel alone or rejected. It’s the road that keeps me in addiction to love’s substitutes – approval, reassurance, avoidance and hugs that help me deny my pain.
The former road means facing feeling alone, unsafe, unworthy and ashamed. This road, the one to God, takes a course through the dark emotions. The second takes me around them, on any number of detours, escaping the lows of shame and grief, for ‘higher’ ground. The only problem is that on the second I seem to tire so much and it never, ever, leads me to God. That road only leads me to a cul-de-sac and when I get there at the end of my long and tiring life I know I’m just going to have unpack my backpack and in it I will find the shame, unworthiness and grief I was trying to avoid all along.
On the first road I don’t have to carry a backpack. It will be painful at first but I know as I go the scenery will improve and I may even start humming a tune or two. But there is pain in starting out, and there will be pain in staying the course.
How much do I really want it?
Am I willing to step directly into the things I fear?
The second road still calls me. It tempts me; it masquerades as the easier route. The surface is smoother underfoot… but it’s that darn backpack that weighs me down.

I feel frustrated that I know the best path to take and yet I do not take it. I’m sitting dawdling. My backpack gets heavier by the minute and I have a tendency to whine about it. How uncaring is that? I want to whine about how heavy it is when it is my choice to keep lugging it about. It’s tiring all this lugging. It’s more than tiring it gets painful. Which leads me to the dog..
The Wounded Dog

I wanted to share a story with you about a dog full of barbs. It was told to me by Yeshua and comes from our brother John, who while here on earth the second time, was given this story from his spirit friends.
Imagine a dog who has been shot full of arrows with barbs on their ends. They are stuck in his skin and he yelps as he moves. He is in constant pain.
There is no way to remove the barbs without more pain. Barbs by their nature become lodged and stuck; their prongs embed in the skin at different angles. The most loving thing we can do for the dog is to ask him to lie still and allow us to remove the barbs as gently as possible. We can’t prevent the pain but if he doesn’t thrash and kick he won’t be injured further.
Now imagine yourself as this dog. The process of birth and growth from childhood has left you stuck full of barbs – not barbs from God but from our forefathers’ decisions to neglect God and love, from our own life’s choices which have placed pain within our souls. So we are now full of painful wounds, tender to touch.
God is so tender and loving and He wants so much to see us free of barbs and wounds and all of the sharp things caught in our coat. He will do everything he can to ease them out of us gently. The barb that hurt so much going in is going to sting coming out. There is no avoiding it. But if we lie still, if we surrender and allow God’s Hands to gently work, it will happen quickly and we will feel the sheer relief of it leaving us.
It is when we fight and resist that the process becomes painful, we cause more injury to ourselves and those around us when we thrash and rebel against what is most natural. In trusting and allowing we liberate our pain and in letting go it hardly hurts at all. Like the prick of a splinter exiting our palm, the quick, sharp, pinch is nothing compared to the feeling of relief as it comes out.
And this is the key lesson our spirit friends were tyring to teach us – our pain now is almost entirely due to the fight against feeling what is already within us. We are so terrified of the removal of the barbs. We believe it is the ultimate pain, not realising that it is actually relief.
So instead we fight and struggle or we try to find a comfortable way to numb the pain.(1) But this only augments our suffering. The barbs can start to fester, an infection can spread throughout our entire lives.
The greatest way to relieve our pain is the simplest – to allow and feel what is there while we let God’s Love and Grace remove our error.
“The new birth is the flowing of the holy spirit into the soul of a man and the disappearing of all that tended to keep it in a condition of sin and error. It is the love of God that passes all understanding…
Your will is the thing that determines whether you will become a child of God or not. Unless you are willing to let the Holy Spirit enter into your heart, it will not do so. Only the voluntary submission to, or acceptance, of the Holy Spirit will make the change.”(2)
Submit and allow the barbs to be removed.
At my fork in the road I so desperately want to fight. Indeed I spent some hours yesterday just fighting with God about it all. I feel angry at love. Can you believe that? I want to be angry at AJ for just loving me because it reminds me of how much I hurt, how much I missed him. It’s like, because I don’t want to feel the pain of loss I have deadened a part of my heart. Now that I have AJ in my life everyday it is harder and harder to avoid the pain of this partitioned off part of my soul.
I have screamed and sobbed at God, wanting another way out, any other way but through, any other road but the first. God, in all Her tenderness, just waited, waited for me to stop thrashing while she gently tries to remove the barbs.
It’s hard to trust Her.
She’s still waiting and I resist Her Love.
You know what it’s like when you’re having a bad day at work. You’re OK while everyone is just doing their thing. They may even be terse and bossy with you. You’re fine until that one person just reaches out and says, ‘Hey, you look beat, would you like to talk?’ The sudden kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge and you find yourself crying.
I feel like my whole life has been one long work day, with me beating up on myself for not doing well enough, and others around me demanding I give more. Now when I consider opening up to God, who just wants to hold me and says ‘I love you no matter what’, it feels like I’ll loose it, completely loose it.
So I push Her away.
I push away my Heavenly Mother who Loves me.
I push my mate away.
I resist anyone who is tender and gentle because I can’t bear the contrast between what life has been and what it can be.
There are so many barbs.
I’m praying now for the strength to surrender to myself, to God’s process. The process She designed with infinite care, the road that brings me back to Her.
I’m praying for you to, that you may also find this courage.
Sometimes we get so used to the barbs that we feel they are preferable. Or we decide we don’t mind the heavy backpack, we believe we deserve it.
Sometimes the hardest thing to surrender to is LOVE.
“Surrender dear sister, surrender” I hear my guides whisper “Take the shorter route, though it feels you will plunge directly into darkness, trust the Father, for from that point on your load will be lighter and your steps will be surer.”
“Take the narrow road that leads to God.”

[1] The Pharmaceutical industry is based almost entirely upon this principle; “How can we help you numb your pain?”, rather than release its cause.
[2] Excerpt from a message received from Yeshua, channelled by James E Padgett in 1915. For further information on where to view or purchase the Padgett Messages see here, here and here.

Gratitude & Growth

For the past few months I’ve been living in the mantra:
“God’s got me in a process – whatever comes, whatever happens all I need to do is stay humble and keep feeling, and praying, and I’ll grow”
And I’ve felt myself growing and learning and changing. I prayed and cried and journalled and just been heaps more honest with myself and it has all helped.
I’ve learnt to trust God more. I’ve begun to want Him and I’ve felt the tides of grief have been worth it. I’ve felt that they’ve left me cleaner and clearer.
But on Thursday, as the dust settled behind the rental car carrying the two men who had come to make the documentary about us, I didn’t want to be in the process anymore.
I wanted to find a dark, cosy hole of denial I could crawl into and forget about how exposed I felt, how awkward and inarticulate. I felt like I had failed to express how precious this Path is to me, how much it means to me, and I didn’t want to face certain exposure and ridicule.
AJ, Yeshua, my mate and the kindest soul I ever knew, kept reminding me that I’m just a work in progress but wow I felt so inadequate and imperfect. I felt like my mantra was smug and that I wasn’t ready for any of it, I just wanted a normal life again. I got into dangerous projection and denial territory.
I’m still coming out of it and I’m dismayed at how readily I slipped back into fear. I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by many who love me and I feel upset when I let my connection with them sever because I fear the reactions of people I have never met.
The luminous lesson I revisited today was that of gratitude. I have so much to be thankful for.
I have a man who loves me so completely that I can’t even comprehend it.
I have God in my life. This is such a magnificent and humbling gift. I have starved for Him for most of my life.
I live a life that I am passionate about, that upholds ideals that I believe in. I am supported in this by so many, many of whom (many of you) I have never even met. I never believed that I would find a way and a place to live that fulfilled me and answered all of my questions. I found it and I am grateful.
I eat good, nutritious food. I am clothed. I have shelter.
Yes, I still need to process my fears, and the road ahead may have some tough emotions and situations to face but my life holds so much richness and beauty and possibility.
Some years ago I spent two years living in a refugee camp in southern Beirut, Lebanon. My brothers and sisters in that camp taught me much about dignity and suffering, about war and traffic. They extended to me deep hospitality and warmth. I feel privileged that they opened their homes and hearts to me. I felt my offerings in their community were so feeble in comparison. I still think of them often. I hope one day that I can do something to change the way their lives are lived. At present they live with scarcity of opportunity, education, clean air and nutrition.
Many of my old friends feel I have sold out on my humanitarian ideals. In fact I feel I have embraced them more strongly. It was too easy for me to avoid my disillusionment and cynicism through actions; actions that I knew were futile to make lasting changes in people’s lives. It’s hard, in times when I feel hopeless about my own progress towards God, to not be tempted to go back and make a splint for a Haji in Bourj el Barajneh, Beirut. 
Instead I remember the ones who live there. It makes me more grateful for the gifts I have been given and it spurs me on to make changes in this one soul. Changes that I hope, will ripple more positively and in much wider concentric circles than the ones I have created in the past.