Intelligent Design

I’ve listened with a certain wonder as friends of mine call to report certain traumas that have resurfaced in their lives, accidents and deaths too. I don’t know why it feels like it’s prevalent now, but I have to come clean that it’s happened to me also. I take solace in knowing that love does the beckoning, and light shows up areas in our bodies, personalities and systems that need some attention to function with ease. “Ease?”, you say,”What about, No pain, no gain? Isn’t sacrifice noble? Won’t all of this hard stuff produce good down the road; certainly in heaven?”

Well, why wait for your good? And, maybe there is an intelligent design that we cannot fully understand that has a beautiful and more expansive pattern for us to express?

The Age of Reason is coming to a close I’m told, and the reliance on the mind to explain things will hopefully yield to wonder. Wonder involves an opening, like a vacuum, and Creation will fill it. If you want new things in your life, you may consider yourself a creator, and not just a reactor. I’ve been given some opportunities to do that and it’s really quite exciting, even though the awareness has arisen from painful and limiting circumstances. I get to choose differently, and that just hasn’t happened in my life until I become conscious of a pattern of thought or behavior, and do the work to change it. The hard part is to stop condemning myself when I’m in the midst of the pain or circumstance, and I’ll bet that might be the hard part for you too.

I spent time with a friend who asked for help yesterday morning. She’s leaving a painful and less than healthy relationship, and needed some help moving. I can’t do any lifting now, but I did go for emotional support. It took only a second to see the pain on her face, and that was hard for me. But, I didn’t try to take it away from her, make it better, or anything really. I hugged her, wiped her eyes, and said,”It’s painful, but it will pass. I’m here, and we’ll help you.” She immediately began berating herself for more reasons than I could keep up with. I didn’t interrupt. I saw myself in her, just nine years ago, when I was doing the same thing.

So, after a short time, and she stopped talking, I could tell her what transpired with me. I spent a full two years locked in a cycle of running from pain and wishing things were different, and then almost died myself. During those years all sorts of people sympathized with me; gave me shelter, prayed over me and with me, and yet I stayed trapped in a pattern of running from my heart pain, reactive behavior, and in my mind trying to devise a strategy that included things returning to how I thought they worked best.

Praise God, I can behave differently today in the wake of tragedies; in my case it was a painful hernia that landed me in the Emergency Room because I was ignoring the more subtle cues from my body that it needed attention. A mystical experience in the ambulance was other worldly too, and it brought into sharp focus what my ignoring pain could have done, but for the Grace of God that intervened and reminded me,

“Pay attention to this, there is beauty here.”

And there was. The most brilliant, loving and gentle light that I’ve yet experienced shone over me as love, and it brought me back to life, and affirming self-care. I’m fine, and the hernia will be repaired, but I’ve had time to wonder about this event. What’s come up for me is my pattern of ignoring physical pain, and soldiering on with my body as if it didn’t need care. I’m not proud of this, and I think it came from a time in my life when I was punished for getting hurt. I was a child, and my mother was unable to deal with so many demands from us because of her own fractured state, that she reacted angrily to my need for help when I was sick. Of course I thought her reaction was my fault; I was a kid and didn’t know better. But, I’m not a kid anymore and I do know better. I’m more than grateful to know that my healing can include the excision of this pattern of behavior because it is destructive and painful. I want a life of freedom and health and much more ease than I have allowed in the most recent years. I can choose differently, in fact, I must if I am to honor the only way that I can experience anything on this Earth; through my body and being.

I am a participant in this wondrous Universe today; not a victim in a random set of circumstances. I don’t just believe this, I know it. While there are many things I cannot control, there are many that I can, and I am in awe of each opportunity that comes my way to see what they are.

Life is beautiful. Love is most powerful, and light purifies the dross that needs to go, so that my creative expression can sing to this world, in joy for the profound experience of regeneration.

When I stop telling stories about why things happen the way they do, and simply tell myself and others how I am feeling, energy seems to move. I stay open, and alive. The pain passes, perspective alights, and I am stronger.