Category Archives: Soul Mate Relationship

Self expression, desire and the soulmate relationship

A key part of the soulmate relationship is each half in a state of full allowance of the other; desiring and encouraging expression in the other.

Soulmate love involves the longing of each half, for the other to have full and free expression.

In essence, this is a supportive, loving and deeply felt heart desire for the other to be themselves.

Excerpt from a message from Rachael & Timothy, spirit guides
Received 5th October, 2018

Reflections on Relationships: July Newsletter

Hey everybody,

I was going to start by saying July wasn’t one of our best months. But upon further consideration I think it’s more accurate to say it wasn’t a fun month. It was a month of facing challenges (me), embracing new truth (me), speaking up (both of us), making solid decisions (both of us), and taking positive action in line with the kind of relationships we both desire. So, in reality that is actually very good use of a month of time.

As I wrote this update a definite theme relating to relationships emerged. In fact there are so many lessons and principles illustrated throughout the latter sections on our relationship and family visit that to start with I’m just going to do a quick round-up of general news and offer our thanks to those of you who donated to us in July. Thank you very much; we really appreciate you and your generosity.

Studio

During July most of the finishing touches were added to our new studio. The desks and benches were installed and Lena, Igor and I gave the place a thorough cleaning top to bottom. There are just a few minor jobs sealing up the outside that will be completed this week and then we are ready to move our equipment in.

We will then start the process of testing the sound and may have to create a few sound absorbers to reduce any echo that may be there.

We hope to be operational by the end of August and Jesus and I are really looking forward to creating some regular content for you all. We have SO MANY topics we want to discuss. Even if we talked for 12 hours a day for the next year we still wouldn’t be through all of what we want to catch up on. Needless to say we won’t be talking for 12 hours a day for any period of time so we will just take it slowly and make sure what we do create is of a high quality in terms of content and technical production.

Other Various Updates

Jesus has still not had a chance to do an update to the website but that should occur in August.

We now have 269 clips on our clips channel. These clips are all searchable via the YouTube channel so I hope you find them useful. The tagging on these clips is quite thorough so if you are looking for truth on a certain topic you will find that the search function embedded in the page is very useful. For example, you can simply search words like ‘vegan’, ‘partner relationship’ or ‘return of fourteen’ and you will come up with a variety of clips from different talks where Jesus has discussed these specific topics.

searchyoutube

This nifty screen shot from Lena & Igor shows you where the search function can be found on individual youtube channels. The big purple arrow points to it.

Choosing Our Relationships

As I mentioned in our last newsletter we welcomed many Millers (Jesus’ family) to our home early on in July. They stayed with us for a little under a week and there were some interesting discussions had. It became really clear early on that the other Miller’s desires (apart from those of Tristan) were in line with a lot of small talk and façade and there were definite attempts to control what topics of conversation were allowed. While Jesus and I are happy to chat about what people have been up to, what environmental projects we have going on, and even topics like politics, travel, weather and current events, there are times when we, through the simple expression of being ourselves, bring up issues like emotions, and past family events.

Our guests weren’t happy with that and so in the end at our request they, with the exception of Tristan, left our company a few days early. While I had some personal emotions to feel about their desire to control us and attack Jesus, Jesus and I had some great discussions after this all happened.

We decided that we only want personal relationships with people who:

  • value and embrace humility
  • desire truth and
  • want to love

People who don’t value or want truth live in façade. These people, through their resistance to truth, also exert severe pressure on the people around them to not be truthful about who they are, what they want, and attempt to force people to accept everyone’s façade.

People who don’t want to be humble towards their feelings and who don’t want to love are going to punish the people around them for their unresolved issues, live in addiction and not be concerned about treating others with a lack of consideration, respect or love.

Our desire to only form close relationships with people who have the three qualities I listed above applies irrespective of whether a person is a blood relative, their partner or an old friend. Worldly expectations – familial or otherwise – no longer apply.

Conversely any person, whoever they are or how I meet them, if they are someone who is humble, who speaks truthfully and desires to love then I’m interested to get to know them. They don’t have to share my belief about God, the Universe or even who we are. If someone has those three qualities then, in the context of a relationship, they can be trusted to treat me well or at least work things out without the need for condescension, attack or bullying.

Jesus once talked to me about some of the states we can live in when it comes to expression of self.

One is that we ‘give ourselves away’. When we give ourselves away, we relinquish our personal desires and aspirations in favour of what other people want, we alter our personality to suit our environment and we are compliant to the whims and wishes of others.

Another state is that we ‘be ourselves’. In this state we are real and open about who we are, what we want and what we feel. We don’t force ourselves, or our beliefs upon others but we don’t hide these things either. Being ourselves means giving up our façade and simply expressing our nature through our actions and in our interactions. To be ourselves at all times, with everyone, is loving.

A third state is ‘sharing ourselves’. When we share ourselves we go beyond just ‘being ourself’. Sharing ourselves means desiring and allowing ourselves to be known, sharing what we deeply feel and desire. We can share ourselves in loving, though different ways, through soulmate relationships and friendships.

We are always going to end up in pain if we choose to share, or try to share, ourselves with people who don’t want to know us and who do not love or desire to love us. In other words attempting to share ourselves with someone who can’t be trusted to love us is not taking good care of ourselves. Equally attempting to share ourselves with someone who clearly doesn’t want to know us is only going to lead to disappointment and this kind of desire is usually led by addiction. However, choosing to share ourselves with people who do love us and care about our welfare is very rewarding and encourages growth.

While being ourselves all the time is loving, to be selective and discerning about who we choose to share ourselves with is also a sign of love and development.

So, I have been reflecting on and feeling about these three states of being myself for some time. Having Jesus’ family gathering was a great way to bring a lot of things into clear focus for me. In the wake of it all I’m excited to be even more clear and assertive in my desire to only share myself with those who love, or who aspire to love through being humble and embracing truth.

During the drama we both fell ill with a throat, chest, and head flu. Neither of us has been that sick for years but gladly as we worked through things we got better again.

P1000356

Our Soulmate Relationship

Jesus and I have also been working on some relationship issues that I feel really positive about.

I should probably say that we are always working on the betterment of our relationship but at the moment I feel that I am making some key shifts that will drastically improve our individual happiness and unity as a couple. This is where some of my long term resistance has been and it feels great to make some changes and feel the positive difference.

I am beginning to experience the difference between ‘working on emotions’ in order to ‘get through them’ or to ‘solve a problem’ and the true state of surrender.

As I start to understand and even experience the state of surrender it feels a lot like changing from a ‘thinking being’, governed by intellect and analysis, who sometimes has feelings, into being my feelings with thoughts, decisions and aspirations that stem from those feelings. It is the allowance and embrace of all of my emotions, all of the time. Not because it is the ‘right’ thing to do or because I want to ‘deal with something’ but because this is who I truly am – a feeling being, a soul with a body and mind. This is the Way that Jesus has been speaking about for so many years.

It still feels awkward to try and explain it but as nearly as I can put it right now; surrender is accepting the truth that God created me as an emotional being and my wanting to experience myself as such again.

I’ve fought this state for years and years and honestly I observe that almost everybody who hears Divine Truth does this. I’ve come to realise that I’ve been terrified of just how emotional I actually am and I perceived that others would judge and attack this in me. I’ve judged my surrendered state as being a ‘histrionic woman’ who won’t be taken seriously. Ironically I’ve been far closer to histrionics and melodrama in my resistive state than I ever will be in a surrendered state. In fact, surrender is the opposite of being dramatic, emotionally manipulative and over-the-top.

When I allow myself to surrender my passions and aspirations are impossible to ignore. Allowing more of my emotions, without being selective, I find that what I want to do and how I want to create is impossible to ignore. That feels great. I sometimes feel scared – how will others treat me when I embrace my love for God to its full degree? – but in this surrendered state even feeling that fear feels good. I find it ironic since I have been telling myself for years that connecting to myself will be traumatic, only leading me to be sad all the time and to realise that I am a terrible person. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So, how does my working on all this relate to our soulmate relationship? Well, obviously my resistance to allowing all of myself all of the time has a huge impact on how Jesus and I can connect. It is impossible for us to be emotionally and physically intimate while I am resisting the experience and sharing of my true emotional self. But even more than that, my judgement of the surrendered state which has stunted my own soul growth has also had an impact on Jesus’ personal progression.

My judgement of surrender has caused me to judge Jesus in his surrendered state. I have attempted to control him, a lot of our life, our interactions with each other and with other people in an attempt to prevent my own emotions. I’ve also been quite needy and oppressive, wanting him to share my feelings, validate them, help me avoid ‘making mistakes’ in love and basically tried to consume our life with a focus on me and my resistance. Jesus in an open, emotional state triggers my own emotions which I have wanted to prevent. And I’ve also lived in fear of how both of us would be judged and viewed if we were in a sensitive, surrendered state with other people. I’ve been angry about surrender and withdrawn into my ‘numb’ state again and again in an attempt to avoid the situation. This would lead Jesus to feel that the situation was hopeless and he would have to ask me to either leave or to deal with my emotions.

I would then become all ‘goal orientated’ about ‘getting to’ my feelings which is a completely different thing to choosing to live my life as a feeling being. Because of my resistance, as much as we talked about surrender and the Way, I really didn’t get how wrong I was getting it. I would ‘try harder’ to feel rather than surrendering to feeling all the time.

I am pointing this out because I believe that there is a valuable lesson here. The truth is that a person who is only interested in preventing their own feelings (like I have been) also has no interest in the feelings of others and actively tries to prevent others from feeling their feelings. That’s the truth and that is what I and anyone who resists surrender will do automatically.

P1000532

Because Jesus was already in the feeling state – he was a feeling being – when I met him it has been pretty exhausting for both of us living together. In effect I have been fighting my emotional self and fighting him on being himself every day. Whether voiced or not, there has been complete emotional disharmony between each half of our soul. There has been a difference in our states – one of us in a state of desire to live in the soul, the other in a state of desire to control the soul. Jesus has been trying to address this difference with me for the longest time and I’ve been trying to ignore it. I haven’t really wanted to understand it because it challenged my sense of control.

This is a more pronounced effect than that of two people living together who are both resisting surrender. These two people are actually helping each other to avoid surrender and so there is no conflict between their states of being.

Jesus’ sensitivity to my judgement, along with my overt and covert attempts at outright control of him, has made it difficult for him to remain in his previously surrendered state. Because of the extreme amount of pressure I placed on Jesus to conform to my non-feeling state Jesus has found it extremely difficult to feel any emotion while in my company. This has meant us sleeping apart for very long periods throughout our entire relationship, the latest period being 18 months. For Jesus sleeping together has seemed impossible since it feels like there is a soul based argument going on 24×7.

As we continue to work through this issue Jesus has been reflecting on his invitation and allowance of me living with him, in a state so opposed to his own, for so long. He presumed that me saying that I wanted to progress meant that I was desiring to live The Way. When in fact, despite what I may have been telling myself, I have been in direct opposition to surrender.

I have wanted power and control over my emotions and the only way I was going to get that was to have power and control over my partner and to have him feed my addictions. My over riding projection has been ‘don’t do anything that will trigger my emotions’ because I believed that being an emotional being 100%of the time would remove my power and expose me to some sort of harm. In this state I turned every confrontation of my emotions into a competition or a power play. Any person in an unemotional state who wants to stay unemotional will always feel and behave this way. Judgement of and desiring to control our emotions makes us view open emotion and honesty in another as a threat to our value, worth and power.

The truth is that surrender feels like the opposite of powerlessness. It is the end to competition. In this state emotions don’t feel like a sign of weakness but a beautiful experience of self. There is no judgement of what is felt only aspiration to experience it. And through that experience we can heal.

This much is clear; for a loving relationship to survive both parties have to be feeling beings.

JesusMaryCairnsTain

Jesus and I really want to talk about all of this in more detail in future presentations because this change in state is the key to living the Way and knowing God. Although Jesus has spoken about it many times before I notice that just about everyone who has heard Divine Truth is still struggling to even want to make this transition. So I feel that anything we can share that might encourage, inspire and assist people in this area is worthwhile.

Thank you again to everyone who has donated to us over the past month. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to live my passion to share Divine Truth with the world and each of you help to make that possible.

I hope that you are all experiencing your own growth and changes and that life is rewarding for you.

Until next time, with deep love and gratitude,

Mary

{Notes On} Missing the Gifts

I know of a woman, who, after eagerly anticipating the birth of her first child, took one look at him after delivery and said “But he’s a blond.” She refused to wash, hold or nurse him for days after his birth. She had anticipated a cherub with brown hair and eyes, and couldn’t accept the blue eyed beauty who arrived.

This woman had no appreciation for the utter wonder of this small new being, a child of God, grown in her womb and birthed by her.  She was not awed by the miracle of birth, or the gift that God offered her in the privilege of becoming a parent – which is the opportunity to learn about love, and God’s very nature through our own lived, visceral, heart-tugging experience with another being, a child.

She wanted a brown haired baby, and this one was blond. So he was rejected.

I know of another woman who felt certain that her long-standing boyfriend was soon to propose to her. She collected jewellery catalogues pondering which ring she would love to wear. When she found one she liked she strategically left her chosen ring circled in the pages, lying around her apartment. She was hoping her man would take the hint.

Sure enough, the day arrived when after a long and beautiful date that the boyfriend had planned, (culminating on the deck of a yacht no less), he got down on one knee and produced a ring box. This was it – her long anticipated moment. He asked to spend the rest of his life with her.

And yet as he opened the ring box her face suddenly fell in disappointment. He had purchased another ring! Her ‘perfect moment’ was suddenly marred as she gazed into the ‘wrong’ glittering diamond arrangement.

It turned out that she had previously marked another ring in the catalogue and the diligent boyfriend has seen this and bought it, thinking it was what she wanted.

After accepting his proposal, she promptly insisted that he go back and exchange the ring for the correct selection.

This woman could overlook the huge gratification of having the man that she professed to love, actually loving her back. (No small gift in itself people).

She could forget that this same man loved her so much that he wanted to spend, not just the afternoon, but the rest of his life with her, and only her.

She wasn’t interested that he was attentive enough to even notice a jewellery catalogue in her home, and to look to at it in order to attempt to make her dreams come true.

Nope, she felt that he ‘ruined’ the moment by not getting it exactly right.

True story.

So why am I telling you all this?

I’m telling you because these are examples of people who, because of their own agendas, overlooked gifts that were offered to them. Their examples might sound extreme to you? But I didn’t use them so that you could shake your head and judge these women.

No, I’m telling you because as I look at my own life and I see that I have been showered with gifts, and I have rejected so many of them because they didn’t come in the package or way that I wanted or anticipated. A lot of times, it is only with hindsight that I even recognise that a gift was even being offered.

I’m telling you because often we see the absurdity and hurtfulness in other people’s actions, but at the same time overlook how we ourselves are acting in very similar ways.

gift

About five years ago, I had just returned from living overseas for an extended period. It had been a time of great personal change, new experiences and exposure to new ideas. I was at a point where I knew that I wanted to reassess what my life was all about.

I’d experimented with my career. I’d taken up more post-grad study. I’d recently broken up with a partner. While I thought I knew some things about what I wanted, there was a whole lot of stuff that just didn’t sit right about my future direction and life values. I sort of knew what I didn’t want, but internally I didn’t think I could get what I really dreamed of – because that stuff just doesn’t work in the ‘real world’, right?

Around this time my friend Jessica invited me to go out for dinner in Brisbane with her and some of her work colleagues and friends. After dinner we piled into a near-by night club called ‘Fridays’. Having lived in Brisbane for four years while I studied for my degree, being back in ‘Fridays’ brought back many memories of my uni days, not all of them were fun or flattering (smile). This night, I distinctly remember standing very soberly on the edge of a dance floor, surrounded by people of various ages and in varying degrees of inebriation and thinking “Here I am back in a familiar place, yet I feel so different. What is my life really all about anyway?”

I chose that moment to pray. Strange I know, but there it is.

Now, back then I wasn’t what you would call a formal ‘pray-er’. In fact I hadn’t explored my own feelings enough to decide what I really believed about God. But from what I now know about true prayer, I can tell you that I most definitely prayed at that moment.

Here’s what I prayed:

“God, please let me find the one man who is for me. I want the partner who will share my passions, and dreams, who will want to make a life together, a life that is about something meaningful and true. I want the ‘forever’ man who will be my friend and partner and who will want what I want for the world.”

It was a strong feeling, that I felt explode out of me like a shock wave. Then I just went back to making small talk with the journos I’d had dinner with.

You know what comes next in this story don’t you?

The next week AJ gave a talk at my parent’s home and he and Cornelius stayed overnight. It wasn’t a huge, harps playing, thunder clap kind of moment. I wish I could tell you that doves appeared in the sky and we gazed knowingly into each other’s eyes.

The event passed for me without much conscious acknowledgement (although many emotions were stirred). AJ was famously tongue tied, and I spent most of the time telling Corni about my travels, interspersed with me directing some pointed questions towards AJ about the Course in Miracles or something or other.

I couldn’t see the gift.

In fact, as is by now well recorded, as I got to know AJ I vacillated between extremes of attraction towards him and intense rejection, anger and denial of any feeling toward him.

Quite simply, meeting AJ triggered every fear and deeply suppressed sense of loss inside of me. So extreme was my fear and its denial, that I didn’t see our relationship as a gift. In fact I hardly saw his true personality at all. I rejected my feelings, resented the truth, and did a great many things to harm him and the possibility of us being together.

With every gift that God gives us He desires that we come to know ourselves more fully. And that we may be drawn by our own desire to grow closer to Him. This often means confronting the errors and blocks we have to knowing God’s Nature, Love and to recognising the Wisdom inherent in His Design.

I feel now that my meeting AJ again was perhaps the best gift I have ever, ever received – even better than our very first meeting in the 1st century. Yet at the time not only did I reject this gift, I resented the sense of a loss of control and terror of attack, that our meeting triggered in me.

The creation of our soul mate is an immense gift. It is the gift that delivers the exact answer to my prayer made in the night-club five years ago. Even in our injured state, being in a relationship with our soul mate has immense power to help us grow and know ourselves. Even if both halves of the soul are injured or hurting, if they desire to know and heal themselves, they naturally and automatically become a support, inspiration and example for the other simply through their own self-expression and journey.

But I literally couldn’t see or receive these gifts until I developed humility to my own fear and pain. The resistance to my own self caused me to be blind to what gifts I had received and was being offered.

 *********

Our friend Josh always says that God’s Law of Attraction brings you Truth in a graded way – first as a feather, then as a brick, and then as a truck. Meaning that God is gently trying to bring us towards Truth all the time, and when we engage our soul’s desire to grow and yet keep overlooking the feather-weight Truths that nudge us, a stronger attraction is required to wake us up to our error, enter the brick. And if we still deny or resist he brings us a truck sized event, all in the effort to help us see how we err from Love and Truth.

Imagine if we could all wake-up to the feathers brushing up against us, designed to show us our errors. If we saw these nudges and worked in our hearts on releasing their causes, our awareness and appreciation of gifts would overwhelm us.

openheart

I know that it has become fashionable in recent years to keep a ‘Gratitude Diary’ as a way of counting blessings, and seeing gifts. The problem with this approach is that we aren’t already automatically seeing and feeling the gifts. Instead we are employing a technique to grow our awareness. In principle I’m not opposed to any non-violent practice that assists a person to grow their awareness. Awareness is the first step we take when healing a problem, or opening to a gift.

However the problem with simply keeping a journal and not pausing to reflect more deeply to ask ourselves why we weren’t already noticing these gifts and rejoicing in them in our daily life, is that the practice will require constant repetition in order to provide any sense of joy. The joy cannot be deep and lasting because we are already suppressing or avoiding the feelings that prevent the natural recognition of gifts.

In my own example, it didn’t matter how intellectually aware I was of the gifts of my soul mate’s love, support and acceptance of me. While I justified my fear and pain, I simply didn’t honour or feel them as gifts. Until I was willing to be humble to my true feelings I couldn’t see that God had answered my prayer; instead I believed that He had dealt me a poor hand in life.

In the experience of the first women above, the emotions triggered by the birth of a son whose appearance reminded her of something painful, marred her joy at motherhood. So intense was the experience, that she couldn’t manufacture gratitude. Her only solution would have been to explore her reaction emotionally in order to resolve it and open her heart to her child.

In the second example, the woman had closed her heart to love, and instead lived in the injuries of façade. She believed that love equated to providing her with material things, and fulfilling her every wish. She literally could not see the gift of her boyfriend’s love and fidelity because she was obsessed with appearance, fanfare, and tradition. She demanded the fulfillment of her obsessions, rather than seeing what of value was being offered.

Intellectually counting gifts in order to grow gratitude is only effective if we understand that in a truly humble place we would not need to count our gifts – they would already be blindingly apparent and abundant on a moment to moment basis. So if we are using an intellectual technique to notice our gifts, in order to grow we must be willing to take the next step which is to heal our injuries that prevent us seeing receiving these gifts without the need for technique.

Also, if we try for gratitude, we can quickly end up in a stuck and self-punishing state. We can use our mind to see or count gifts around us, and yet finding that our heart is dead to them, we can end up berating ourselves. For example, I spent many nights punishing myself, because I had vast evidence of my soul mate’s kindness, patience and generosity with me and others, and I could see that I was not feeling grateful for these things. In fact I was actively rejecting and criticizing them.

By trying to be grateful, trying to manufacture gratitude because we ’know it’s the right thing to be’, we can end up creating a hell of self-flagellation for ourselves.

The only way to truly notice and receive gifts is to open our hearts and heal the injury that blocks us to receiving in the first place. Our lives lived in suppression of emotion cause us to seek out addictive and damaging prizes, rather than notice and honour the true and nourishing gifts that God and others offer us. It’s like trying to suppress a deep hunger with sugary sweets, that don’t stay in our stomach long and rot our teeth. Our real hunger and thirst is to feel and know ourselves and God, but most of us feel that’s frightening and dangerous so we bail out and deny.

Yet when we close down the experience of one emotion, we close down the potential experience of others. If we shut down our pain and fear, we can’t feel love or gratitude. It’s as simple and difficult as that.

I can tell you from lived experience that once you begin to open your heart to whatever is in there, without self-punishment, and with a desire to love and heal, gratitude is a natural result.

Can I inspire you today friend? The benefits of opening to our pain are not just a stronger sense of self, greater potentials of a relationship with God and a more loving lifestyle and relationships. Undertaking the journey of healing ourselves literally makes life come alive with a knowledge and experience of the gifts that God has offered.

I feel some pain as I begin to feel how many gifts I have overlooked, rejected or simply let pass me by in life. But there is also the excitement of knowing that as I continue, and grieve and grow, the gifts begin to appear in technicolour all around me.

Do you remember the wonderful world of Walt Disney – full of colour and magic? I liken those images to how life comes alive as we grow. The gifts spring out at us, to be relished and received readily.

But in order to live this we must be willing to examine our expectations, our agendas, and our preconceptions in the light of what is loving and what honours Truth. Only when we are willing to allow the pain of past hurts and the discomfort of letting go of unloving expectations can we even begin to notice the gifts being offered. And this is the first step in coming to discover and embrace the beauty and fulfillment that God has planned for us.

I have been blind to the many blessings and opportunities offered to me until I at last found the courage to begin to open my heart to all that was within it.

I even received the exact thing that I prayed for within one week of my prayer. But I missed the gift because I didn’t expect or want his name to be Jesus.

Disney Alice in Wonderland

Not Drowning, Waving

 “The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!”   Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain

I struggle with feeling insignificant. You wouldn’t know it to look at me because most of my life I’ve been fighting that feeling like crazy. And, I’m ashamed to admit that I’m also apt to get tetchy at anyone who doesn’t help me avoid my gaping lack of self worth. Thus I end up looking stroppy rather than meekly shy and unworthy.
But underneath all the bluster and brashness I feel about the size of a pea. A tiny green pea.
I also care deeply about how you view me. I want to avoid you knowing about my ‘green pea-ness’ at almost any cost. I’d prefer you think of me as worldly, knowledgeable and, if we could arrange it, attractive, kind and considerate too. Underneath I feel I am none of those things. But, did I mention? I don’t want you to find me out.
I firmly believe that to teach well we must honour only that which we wish to teach and not our own part in it. I can’t be full of Truth if I am full of my own self-importance or concerned with my image. Hence when we truly love and want to give the gift of learning to others there is a place we find – where only the Truth and not ourselves matters.

Sometime I strike that balance, a rare magic where I forget all about what you think of me, or how silly my passionate proclamations must look. Instead I am caught up in the beauty of Truth and Gods wonder in everything.

Saturday was not one of those days for me.
On days like Saturday I find myself in a sea of inadequacy. Book group starts I’m floundering in feeling less-than-you and my brain goes to mush.
I don’t want you to know it though. I want rescue… although I haven’t quite figured out how that might work.
AJ arrives – ready to rescue the teaching – and all I can think is how dumb I must seem and how little point there is to me being there…
And that’s where it all goes wrong. I’m still waving, vying for attention, not drowning, and submitting to my feelings. I’m struggling for façade. I still won’t crumble to those emotions so I project out. I want control back.
I want control so that somehow I might prevent the world knowing how insufficient I really am. 
I’m spluttering away in half sentences, trying to keep from drowning, trying to hold back the landslide that really needs to overwhelm me if I’m ever going to be free. I’m looking cranky and cross with AJ.
AJ – who loves me more than almost everything, who values me even when I think we shouldn’t, who involves me in decisions and discussions that I joke are way beyond my pay grade – meaning I have no clue about what we should do since I’m still trying to ward of personal landslides and grappling with humility daily – AJ is there, quietly rescuing truth, aware that I just need to drown, giving me space to do that. He is calm and kind – in the magic place – of loving truth and giving to you.
All the while I’m caught up in my own private melodrama suspecting that you see right through me, but still valiantly attempting to stop you (and the world) from knowing that I really am a tiny pea person, who has no business here.
Its tough and its emotional. And reading my own words I know I see the world through my own error (e.g. perhaps its not entirely true that I’m a tiny pea – but the point is that this is what I feel).
Truthfully I find it hard to share about this stuff, because of the aforementioned dread of you, reader, knowing how small I really am, but also because so many people seem to relish the belief that these feelings are in me because AJ has me in some kind of self-depreciating cycle. If only I could show you all the truth. That I am loved by him so much more than I have ever been by anyone and this is healing me in the tenderest way, in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Since I met AJ my care and respect for myself has grown enormously. Have I told you that I used to drink and smoke and go home with men who didn’t care to know me let alone care to love me? I have wandered around for years trying my best to cover up how desperately bad I feel though addictions and anger. Despite my ‘drowning/landslide private/ public melodrama event’ on Saturday things are actually better inside me than they have been my entire life.
There are days when I do let myself drown in the grief of feeling less-than men and insufficient. I have a long stored up wealth of memories that bear out a painful history of being abused, hurt, overlooked and tortured by men, not to mention I live in a world that has acknowledged me only as ‘whore’ for 2000 years. There is pain to feel and slowly I am submitting more and more.
I’m only disappointed on days like Saturday because my façade, though shaky, still grapples for control. I push out instead of softening inwards. I want you to like me more than I want to love myself. I worry that others, particularly women, use my obvious struggle, to justify their own difficulties with men or with AJ.
I know that such things are beyond my control but truly it would be my hope to challenge you in my humility not offer you validation in my resistance. How can I have you know that crazy, courageous, humility is the only way to freedom and that my pains are my own, and not right to be blamed upon others who love me?
Its so easy to keep blaming men for the feelings already inside, to punish them for the lie that ‘I am less than men’ that I bought and now carry. Regardless of how men may treat me, I will believe this until I am brave enough to grieve it. The sad truth is that the men in my life now had nothing to do with creating these feelings in me. These errors came from men and womenin my past.
I am so grateful that the man who God gave to me loves me. He honours me even when I struggle to do this for myself.
  “Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”                               Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain

God, walk with me while I uncover those worthless, hurting parts of myself. Help me towards humility rather than façade and defence. Let my grieving open me to the truth about myself and to the love that already surrounds me. Let me strive to embrace the suffering of the past so that I may open my heart to a hopeful future, full of freedom.