There had been something brewing in the air lately and I can’t put my finger on why my heart is so sore and lonely, not sure I will ever really know. I feel like emotionally I need to take a break. It is the most loving thing to do. I have been living in God’s grace for the last few days and that requires a solid commitment to not over planning my life. I have been going pretty much flat out since I started recovery. I have workaholic tendencies, so it is really easy to distract myself with busyness. So this whole go with the flow in God’s grace thing, though heavenly, has been really confronting. All this time to process emotions, which were always brushed aside as an inconvenience in my hectic life.
The result is, I am feeling rather bruised. I have tried to bury myself in my program, but God even has other ideas for that. I have found myself slowing right down. I do my tenth every night and I ask for God to direct my thinking every morning, but the rigorous way in which I worked my program in the past, has stopped. I don’t find time for it. Now you would think it’s because I have lost momentum and like I am putting life in front of my program. (This I would have judged other people in the past for, if I heard them talking about the same thing) But instead it is time taken out to go for a massage, take a bath or walk on the beach. Time taken to cook a really loving meal or get involved with my housemates in gardening and making a beautiful place feel like a home,
Sounds pretty healthy to me. The thing people have forgotten to mention, is that although living in God’s grace is simple, it is by no means easy. I have activities take place that ground me and then all this extra time to feel these feelings, that I have spent my whole life forcing down or distracting myself from. It is more painful than I realised and I’m truly present in my body to feel it. I am desperate to reach out to an old intrigue, but by the grace of God, I am holding on to my sobriety again, but that I have to pray for a few times a day, because she would be the perfect detraction from the pain in my body.
I am reading Brennan Manning’s book, “The Ragamuffin Gospel” – I absolutely love it. It is giving me a better understanding of religion, but more so it is really focussed on what “God’s Grace” actually means and how it has been misconstrued. For me, this deeper understanding, is deepening my relationship with God and that is fundamental during this process of deconstructing the barrier around my heart. I feel like, once through this layer, that I will be more vulnerable than a naked baby and I am going to need divine guidance and protection. Manning said, “To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark side. By admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means… My deepest awareness of self is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn or deserve it” – I love this! I have become a human doing and I have always used what I do, to define me and the more I do, the more love I will get. The concept to be loved for who I am is so foreign to me, it’s not even in the same language.
It’s no wonder I am struggling with doing less. It boils down to self love for me. I can not expect you to love me for who I am if I don’t love me for who I am. And it is even more difficult to expect myself to love me for who I am, if I have always been to busy doing to actually be. Who is the human being… I have had a little glimpse. Too brief to really know.
Who Am I? 