Sunday, December 21, 2014
To Trust
To stand as an individual and to hold something unique, yourself is amazing and beautiful. There is nothing or no one that holds any more authority than you do on your needs, experiences dreams, hopes and future. To stand where you have stood is sacred and has never been duplicated in this life by anyone. So it holds true that you are the personal authority on you. Now, as my own personal authority I have learned that there is a lot I do not know and many more things that even if I know them I do not fully understand their applicability in my life. There are others who have gone before that have experienced similar and have insight that may give perspective to my story. But even at that, it still comes down to me.
So how do we hold something that has never been held previously in the history of this world?………successfully?
What is the foundation that we can trust? Since our experiences not only reflect an outer experience, but also an inner life response to those outer experiences the answer to that question cannot be either an inner action nor an outer action only, but reflect an experience that creates both an inner and an outer representation. Without both we are not whole, nor has our voice really been heard. What are we going to trust to find that ?
I want to share some of my experiences around trust to illustrate my thoughts on how I have come to understand this. This is my experience and is uniquely personal, as are my conclusions to those experiences . In my growing up, the culture, both family and church that I experienced did what any organization, or family ought to for young children, they taught about external actions. Hoping that with that knowledge, I would also experience an internal experience that would ground me for life. Young children do need to be taught, they operate on an internal feeling mode without being able to put what they want to do together with an understanding of consequence, delayed gratification, or work as opposed to play. So, it is important to teach things to children that will guide their lives towards being able to achieve their potential, educationally, emotionally, socially and intellectually.
As children grow it becomes important for them to use their growing intellectual, physical, spiritual and emotional capacities, much like an musician studying an instrument, as they move over and over again in the same manner they begin to discover what it looks like, feels like and sounds like to master their study. Much the same way a child needs to fall down, make mistakes and experience failure to fully understand the way to success. IT is through their own feeling, their way through these experiences that they become more competent to do it alone.
Now here is where the challenge lies. There is a moment in time when it is necessary to step away and change your relationship with the child to friend or mentor, whom they may seek out when they need to. This is where things went awry. In a culture where you as an individual are never trusted, no matter what responsibility you are given there is someone there telling you how to "get it right", because the outer result, and authority is the most important. Appearance trumps everything in this culture. We talk about the internal, with assumption that if you get the outside right the inside will be a given, but when there is a challenge it is the outside we are looking at. And over and over again, little by little the inside trust of oneself, one's inner needs, desires and knowing are eroded. For there is always an outer source for the answer, and even if we use the "feeling", it is not yours, but belongs to God, or a higher power that knows better than you. I have watched the fear over and over again. Sometimes it is easier to see in others than myself. Mostly because seeing it in myself is so painful. I recognize what I am seeing because of my own experience. I hear the fear of not being sure if you got right what Heavenly FAther was telling you, or the other one God told me to do something the I really don't want to do, but I will submit, as though God cares nothing for those desires he put in your heart. Then we get into denying yourself of "all ungodliness", but culturally that has turned into everything that you might want or feel. Someone else for sure knows better than you. because we talk about how the "natural man is an enemy to God". The problem then becomes that anything you want or feel becomes the enemy and you have very succinctly and subtly learned to never trust yourself. From side to side reeling to and fro in fear we struggle to find answers because if they are internal, someone else had to have given it to you.
Why did God put desires in our hearts? Why did he make some to love flowers and colors and others to love the science of the sky or earth? So that he could take us all down and put us all into the same mold, wearing our pastels and khakis???
Trust comes from trusting ourselves. Like being a musician comes from practicing. I spent my life being told how my roles should look my clothing, my marriage, my children (, remember the talk "Women Who know"). Inside the sadness built up, until I was lost. I loved my children, my marriage felt marginal and I for sure had nothing to look forward to as a person. The opportunities to choose were around: when I would go visiting teaching, clean my house and do service. I ached to study, to work, but not like I was told that I could. My children didn't want to fit the mold, maybe I had purposely taught them they didn't have to. Life started to unravel from every perspective and there was not one place that I could get right. Many I just didn't have the strength to do anymore. I was so tired, so unengaged in my own life. The last straw happened for me when our daughter's temple marriage ended in divorce. I know that happens, but the circumstances around this happening were betrayal, appearances, abuse,and broken trust and it felt so familiar that I could not wrap my mind around the grief and why it hurt so much. I watched her suffer and suffered with her and finally understood this was all about trust. In order to choose what is best for your growth and potential, your hopes dreams and goals, you need to choose it. You can't choose it with someone in the background, holding more cards than you do. It has to be your desire, your heart your life
I realized through this experience and some others that I won't share here that, here I stood having no idea what I could do. I was waiting for the voice of permission by the culture that what I desired fit into the roles, the ideology that someone else had determined for me and that I had trusted, with my whole heart. Not only had I trusted them, but my worth was built upon fitting into the culture. It was clear that I was good enough when……………… and the list is very long, not only is it long, but it never ends. There is an allotted time for grief, if you need one, but if you are not done and need something outside of that, the disapproval was keenly felt. I have personally been pained by hearing a leader criticize those who asked for a release when they felt they could no longer serve. No essence of trusting their soul, but a solid wall of " the man who knows it all" The crowning blow came when I found out the lies that permeated through that culture, they had been told in veiled truths hidden from plain view. And then I felt betrayed, like my daughter. I had trusted that what someone said they were is what they were. I recognized that lies cannot stand upon lies and that truth is built upon a foundation of truth
Trusting has to start with truth. Learning to trust myself after all of these years of delegating it to an someone else is challenging. IT requires me to think and feel and discern my own soul. I have to build upon truth. Truth is built upon love, life and light. How can I know, how can I trust myself? Truth is the answer. I am practicing trusting myself and guardedly trusting others. I have days where I feel so afraid, like I am free falling. I am learning a new instrument. I am learning how to listen and to play with with my heart, and my desires. I have moments when I feel so free, like a child, all the parameters of fear gone. And others where I wish to fall into someone holding all of this, but I don't really want that. Learning to trust is new. It has created delightful resonance in my marriage. So amazing to trust like this, the fear gone, the judgement gone, just delight in each other. And with myself, I am amazed at who I actually am. So many things I didn't know, they were all hidden in fear and despair and have now been given new life. So, this is what trust feels like. I am still new at this and am cautious and guarded, like I am playing a little haltingly on my newly acquired instrument, but delighted by the sounds and gratefully looking forward to the potential of the beautiful music to be made.
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