The conundrums of choices

There are so many things in life that there are expectations for. In our work, we get asked to do extra things, take on more to help others. In our families, we expect people to believe the same, want the same things. And when we say no, we can often be faced with feelings of guilt, decreased sense of worth from ourselves. And from others, maybe comments that are ignorant, lack compassion or real interest or concern about why we have made the choices we have. Often others want to create solutions for us, so that we can align with what is comfortable to them,. These can all be challenging to navigate, especially if our reasons for taking the stand we have has to do with grief, exhaustion, burnout, or something else along the lines of a person being close to emotionally lacking the ability to continue clinging to the present circumstances as they currently are. I was speaking to a colleague at work today about this. She has recently lost her mother and best friend in her life. She has just finished doing some grief counseling, which she admitted was terribly challenging and emotional, especially in trying to maintain her current load at work. She pointed out to me that as they talked in her group about the need to set boundaries as you are going through these things, others may not understand and that rather than saying "I can't", saying " I choose not to". I thought about that briefly, but still found that hard to say and then I realized I needed a conscious reason if I am saying no. I have to understand it, so that I can in good conscience know that I really am choosing what is best for me. I realize at times in the past I have made decisions to walk way from things, usually nothing very significant, but I think I always felt bad. I have an intuitive sense as to why I made those choices, but nothing I could really fully explain or feel deeply about. Mostly my intuition has been ahead of reasoning in terms of being able to recognize why something is not good for me. But I need to know, not just feel it, although that to is important. For without the feeling, it is just an intellectual argument. I have found myself struggling to understand why in my current job I am periodically feeling good and then burned out. Wanting to leave, and wanting to stay. I recognize that something wasn't working, but I didn't know what. I tend to be too loyal, and too concerned about if I will let someone else down, so I stay usually until something becomes so destructive to me that the intuition gets so strong that I cannot ignore it, even if I don't really know why. But today I realized something new, something I had not understood before. In saying that "I can't", there is more that needs to be added. "I can't" is only the intuition speaking without the concrete reason for the choice, sometimes it is ok, but in matters of significant importance, there needs to be more. The more, I finally heard and could add. "I can't choose that if I want …….whatever particular need/desire is there. My job has some great parts, but the essence of what I am doing is burning me out. So, I now know that IF I want to remain emotionally and physically healthy, have some desire in my life, I can't stay extendedly. I can limp along and finish what I have started, but in creating life in the long term, my time has to be spent in a way that better lifts and fills my heart and soul. So, this sounds so simple and obvious, but getting to the conscious knowledge of the why has been challenging. I have grown so accustomed to muffling any cries or sounds of my own voice with the expectations and/or needs of others, I had become completely unable to look at a circumstance and have any recollection as to whether it was something I could do and remain in good emotions health. Usually I just said,"Yes" and picked up the pieces later. The lesson I had been taught about life was one of racing to make sure obligations are met and then some. NEver stopping because there was a perception that we were running a race with a prize therefore we cannot stop, set a boundary or recognize a desire. No, it is always about the race, the voice that starts rearing its head always is about never stopping, as that is defined as quitting. The blinders are on. We do not look to the right or to the left, but only at the task at hand and it doesn't matter how badly it is going for your, you never stop. Those are the messages that I have heard through my life. Suddenly I realized that those were false beliefs. There is no race, just a beautiful opportunity to experience many wonderful things, that get missed when we are driving at prizes and result, comparison and statistics. When those things define a person's worth….. well, it is just plain exhausting until that point when there is nothing left. That is when the words "I can't if I want to live", "I can't if I am going to have some delight in my life", "I can't if I am going to find my reason for living", yes, that is when those words spoken, loud and clear.. It doesn't matter what those on the sidelines say, or how they judge your performance, I don't belong to the race any more. I have decided just to be a person, one who lives with her heart and soul in the present moment, seeing perceiving and understanding consciously what is here, instead of closing my eyes and pretending that what is there is something else and if I try hard enough I can believe the consequence I know is happening away, but only for a while. Lying to ourselves can soothe us for a moment, but it always catches up to us at some point. When we choose not to listen, the toll it takes upon our souls grows incrementally each time we deny what we know about our hearts, needs and desires. So, today, I say I cannot do the things that you want me to if I want to stay healthy, if I want to enjoy a fulfilling relationship of joy with my self, my family and my dreams. So, it becomes obvious if I choose what you want for me, I am choosing your dream and your hopes and your experience and not my own. That would be perhaps the saddest thing that we as people could ever do. There is only one you. Only one person who has your unique insights, experience, abilities, love, desires, passions and so forth. What would the world look like if you set those aside to be what someone else expected, walked the path someone else decided for you, someone who had no idea of your heart. In essence you would be lost and with that there would be a void left in the world where you and your delight, your life, your love and your dreams were once alive. That would be a sad day…….

The Parable of the Sower

When I was reading this parable, I had questions about how I have always interpreted it. The idea of if you are not faithful enough you fall prey to the places that cause a seed not to grow. Simple explanation, all within the realm of my control based on the choices I make. If I do the things that supposedly keep me within this realm, then there is nothing to fear and I can be assured of my place. But something about this didn't seem right. Being a gardener, I know that if a seed falls in a place that it cannot grow, it is my responsibility as the gardener, not the seeds'. So what does this mean. I looked at the explanations later in the chapter of the story and it seemed pretty straight forward. Then I started wondering about the Hebrew words as opposed to the English ones that I was basing the meaning on. So I started looking up words and comparing them to the Hebrew word that the passage was derived from. A new theme began to emerge for me. So,first the idea of kingdom. (Matthew 13:19) Kingdom, the idea that struck me from my reading is that this is not a realm, or physical area and group of people under the rule of a monarch, but the idea is more subtle, implying dominion, or influence, thus removing the idea of specificity of declared allegiance, place and ideas, but instead more like a blanket of love being thrown out and we can bask in the warmth and comfort that is offered, but the implication about influence has less rigid patterning in order to be a part of this "kingdom". Secondly, same verse, the wicked one, based on my upbringing the image is very clear, but again something about that needed clarification for me. So I started searching and saw in reference to the Hebrew word connected to that, hostile to God. My mind went around and around trying not to superimpose an idea that wasn't actually there because someone else had said it before and left my feelings to dance freely in a space of openness. I started to think what is God? What would be hostile to God? The thought came that if we removed the physical,material idea of God and reduced him down to his most fundamental quality, we have love. Anything that leads us to love and its influence is of God, but anything that leads us from the influence of love is hostile to God. Anything! For my own purposes and experience, those things have been fear, anger, regret, sadness, sometimes physical things places and people have triggered those things in my life and although they can leave me hostile to God, they can also lead me to God, depending on how I hold them. So my state of mind in holding all things is what determines whether I am under that influence of either hostility to God or his dominion. The more I studied this the more I realized that the real message was that we move in and out of all of these places, meaning, the stony place, the wayside, the thorny spots, regularly in life. It is part of the process of finding God and experiencing his influence. We move from stony place, to thorny place, to falling by the wayside and back again, purposefully and individually designed. God knew we would. These teachings are about seeing the places we are in and recognizing that perhaps at this moment we are wilting and withering and knowing that the miracle of his love is the ability that it has to bring fresh life and nourishment when we are withering or feeling close to death. These are not meant to be permanent places, places that we see others in and point a finger recognizing their demise is forthcoming. These are meant to be illustrations of how God invites us back into his influence and his blessing??? Blessing….. Another word I had a great need to look up. Blessed, it has come to mean a state where if you do the right things you get a good result that is what is promised right? But doesn't that leave the possibility for this to oft times see things from a very comparative and prideful perspective? Like, if you are not where I am you are……… fill in the blank. BAck to Blessed, this is what I needed to understand about that word, it is about self contained happiness. It is holding with contentedness, our journey, based on the ability to see what is beyond the material,physical perspective and meaning and in (Vs 11) again, the ability to see is not because of something we have done, our works,or all the perceived service or devotion externally. That does not give us the ability to see. As Jesus points out, there were many prophets and righteous men that wanted to see and could not. So clearly the ability to see is based on something outside of our material, physical action. Jesus came to bring life and to bring it more abundantly. He didn't come to bring a longer to do list. That doesn't give us vision. In fact he gives but two simple commandments. They are about love, not an external, physically defined by action love, but a love defined by an inner content, not an outer representation. We can have outer representation with no inner content. That is perhaps the thing we should be most watchful of in our lives. As Thomas Barrfield in his book "Saving Appearances" defines: An idol is something that has an outer representation with no inner content. The inner content is love, desire, our soul's on definition of meaning. That is what Jesus came to bring. And to break down he came to break down things in antithesis of that, the rules, the externals, holding so dearly to those instead of love. He fought every tradition to bring everything back to love,the inner content. In my own life, the only reason I could not and sometimes till cannot, let go of the outer is that I wasn't and am not always fully convinced that holding on only to love would actually net the same things as all of the outer rules and ideas. I guess what I am saying is that I realized that I didn't really believe him when he said that all things hang on love. I thought that I had to put all of the other things first. Personally that is when I started to wilt in the sun, my root wasn't in his love it was in some outer form, lacking the inner content of love. After studying and trying deeply to let his love influence my ideas and thinking, Today I am just beginning to see that the most important thing ever is the influence of his love. And love, it does not know religion, it does not discriminate against sex, or race or beliefs. Sometimes I really want to discriminate and hold onto the things that put me in a light that I perceive will make me "loved", But really his love invites us in when we are wilting and when we want to know, not what someone else's idea about that are, but his he will tell us. Every day I am trying or let someone else provide them, of what I am trying to understand. Because really when Christ defines them who knows what may grow from the perceived wayside? It may be far greater than our minds and hearts could ever imagine. And who knows the heart of the master and his plan for us? Hearing his heart requires different eyes to see and different ears to hear. He said it himself that many righteous men and prophets could not. The question is Do we want to see his way, or ours????

I am not the sum total of my Facebook posts

I have noticed this interesting phenomenon about social media. We define ourselves, and others, by what we see and post online. We think hard about whether we should "like" something on Facebook or whether or not to post something we thought interesting, not sure what people will think. I remember a few years ago a friend of ours was gong through a change in his life and posted some things on line that out of context looked like he was angry, critical and trying to tear down other people. I remember one of my sons, "unfriending" him, because he didn't want to "get caught up in his negative emotions". At the time I didn't really see what was being said, but thought "yah, for sure" and "that must be the space he was living in, in the rest of his life as well". I mean, he posted it on Facebook, so we can for sure take inference and decide what he meant and how he is living his life? Or can we? So, later I sat with this friend and he told me what had been happening in his life and how the people in his world, not the Facebook world, but the real one had responded to him. He cried and told me how sad and betrayed he had felt by the people that had hurt him and the trust that had been lost. He told me that he didn't know how to find a "new normal" without the things he had lost. What appeared so straight forward, had been the polar opposite of what I had thought. As I had made assumptions, so had many others, who shared their assumptions and judgement of his situation without ever picking up the phone, knocking on his door, inviting him out for "tea". I felt a little embarrassed when I thought of the things I had thought. How I thought looking at his pictures and posts that I had some sense of who he was, but I was dead wrong and not even close in my ability to see him. In the world of social media, we are starving and dying for friendship, for touch, for being seen, being heard, being held and being known. I am not my Facebook posts. You do not know me by what I put up on my wall. You might have an idea of some things that have crossed my mind, but how they play with light with darkness, with love and hate, you will never know if you do not look into my eyes, or listen to my voice. When I get up in the morning, I hate to turn on the lights, so when I shower I have a little seashell "night light" in my bathroom that I turn on, just enough light to see and feel the beauty of the morning. I love scents, so between the nightlight and the soft scent it is a wonderful way to start the day. I have studied to become an aromatherapist. My play smells delightful and calming. It includes mixing and brewing all sorts of concoctions, that calms my emotions, soothes pain and make a person feel loved, those are the most important things in life to me to share with the people around me. I have discovered there are many different ways to share those things. My family knows when I start creating I have entered an alternate universe and it could be a while before I return and when I do, it will look like a whirl wind has run through the kitchen and it will smell wonderful. Sometimes it tastes wonderful too, since I am always experimenting with food, as well. The joke at our house is that whatever I make will have no name and I will likely never be able to recreate it. The other one, is "What is growing on the counter, Mom?" Between bread, sourdough, kefir, kombuchu, sauerkraut, or some other fermented dish, they think I am crazy and sometimes just downright strange. I teach children's preschool programs. When I got that job, I wasn't sure if I wanted it or not. I just wanted something, but now I love watching their eyes when they see you and you know their name and what is important to them. I love that you can pick them up and hold them when they are crying and you can change their whole world for that moment, And waving to Mommy from the window will turn the tears to a smile of delight I love that you can fix what is going wrong for them and watch them smile and send them back to face the game or the other kids. It reminds me of when life still was innocent and I had not watched my own children being broken by things I could never fix and will never be ok. But for the moment, I remember their childhood, the dreams and smiles. Now the world is punctuated with hard words, like rejection, divorce, death, and fear. Fear of things that are not fixed by a hug, a drink and a night light, things that have taken those they loved, and parts of themselves that can and never will be the same, a loss of innocence, with a depth I could never have imagined. But with all of that, we still laugh, go shopping, make music, share dreams and hold onto faith and love. We still pray and try to make sense of the senseless. I study all the time. I am studying Heilkunst, which is homeopathy and the sequential treatment of trauma. Right now most of my study comes from philosophers and doctors from the 1800's. It is challenging to read. It has made me realize how dumbed down we have become. How little time we actually take to see, hear or feel the world. It is like a black and white still shot we live in, with sterile emotions and conforming actions. That is how we are living. The more I study, the more I want to touch the world, sit with you and listen to your voice. I want to laugh with you, hold your hand, hug you and hear your stories too. I don't want to read your Facebook posts. I want to read your eyes. I want to see what is real, not the facade. I don't want to be known from this place, I want this place to invite you to call me and invite me for tea. I want to laugh with you because I miss you. Right now I assume that you are happy in your world and that you don't miss me because all you do is "post" this, "like" my status "comment" on my link, but where are you? Are you ok being alone too?……………………………….

Living for yourself….. or others????

I have a read a couple of different posts, or articles on this subject. One about a young person who had pondered ending their life and felt inspired by the lyrics to a song that brought presence and ability to enter back into life. BEautiful story. I love how music does that. It is like it reaches right through the barriers of space time and words and speaks directly to our soul. I want to stop before the interpretation of the story, which was to live your life for others. That struck me with great force and left me discouraged and feeling a weigh that in the words of one of my friends illustrates what happens over time when we live for others. "For years I have just collected my emotions and stored them in my proverbial shelf. I sort the feelings and emotions and place them in neat and tidy little boxes and store them on this emotional shelf. Continuing the illusion that I have my shit together. These imaginary boxes stay on this pretend shelf with the real food I eat." When we live for others our feelings have little merit except to guide us to be better at doing things for others. I know that I am simplifying this and that those who argue that we should live to do good for others have all sorts of arguments about how wrong I am, but…… I have done it both ways. There is a terrible assumption that if we live for ourselves, from our desires, from our hearts and hopes and needs that selfishness is the base. Sad and terribly wrong assumption. So we could live for ourselves in a way that is devoid of love or concern for another, but that is no more authentic to the soul of the person living than to live for others, either way, we are trapped by fear, and illusions that stop us from truly understanding who we are. The thing of it is life is messy. We have feelings of sadness, anger, regret, frustration and they are a part of our process and learning and when we shelve them, there is hell to pay. My friend shares how hers ended up as extra weight, mine physical illness because I didn't even know what it felt like to hear my own heart. How in God's name, which is the name we do things can we help anyone without our own heart and voice guiding us. I can hear the arguments again, but speaking from experience and from a place where I told myself that what I was doing was what I wanted, well taught words to my mind, but with no basis, regurgitating what I had been told about losing yourself. What happens when you lose yourself? You get lost. Your kids grow up, your husband my leave, or die, a job may change or no longer be there, even friends can come and go. So what do I have without my feelings, my heart, my desires, my passion, my dreams? I can tell you, a lot of fear and emptiness, always trying to see what someone else wants or needs you to do. Shutting off your real dreams, assuming there is no possibility of life for your heart, for you, only a life of losing yourself, which is supposed to make you feel amazing, but like an over dose of chocolate it really feels good until the emptiness kicks in later, leaving you feeling broken and lost, so you need more. So, then what do we want the basis of life to be, if not just giving ourselves away? The fallacy being bred and going strong is about basing your life on something tangible and controllable , like I am living to do good for someone else. I can define that, picture it, give myself kudos for my success. It is definable, your success is definable. Did someone else feel good? Yes, you won. If not, you lose. Did it fit the parameter that I have defined as success and love? If yes, then I win. Sounds very simple and incredibly codependent and dysfunctional. You need someone else, something external to get this right. I want to propose a drastic and different basis for how we live. Love. Very simple. But not the do-gooding, dependent kind of love, but an authentic self love. It emanates from our souls, from our desires, from the relationships that we have, but unlike doing for others this can't be measured for success by what others may think, doesn't necessarily, fit into an idea that is held in society somewhere. In fact in showing real self love you may have to do some things that are hard and others are unhappy, and frightened of, but we as beings know when we are connected to ourself and to the love that makes the universe go round. Lest we think that like giving yourself away that feels really good, this kind is frought with uphill personal growth. There is spaces in time where feelings stop us from what we really want, the kind of love we want to live in and we must STOP and pull them out, maybe yell and scream a little, look good and hard at those feelings turn them around hold them close so we get them, then we can let them go. IT is not neat. We are constantly bumping up against ourselves with no externals to give us the answer, only love and the source of love within us can find our way through those feelings and experiences. But, it is beautiful and amazing. I remember the first time in this process where someone asked me a very deep question about what I wanted and I knew that in the past I would have had no idea , but it was clear that neither option they presented was anywhere close to my heart. I was delighted that I had heard myself for the first time in so many years. My heart has been buried for a long time under the expectations of others, systems of thought, family and societal expectations that I believed would be the guide through the difficulties, but came to understand the real truth was that my heart unburied would be my only real guide through the swamp. I am being connected and inspired by love and if I listen that is where I will live. that is my goal. That is my choice to live from love. You cannot know if I am succeeding, only I and powers that be, the source of all love know the path I am walking and the story being written. Thanks God for our hearts, and for our feelings, for with love as the source material. There is always healing, life and light. This world is busy trying to externalize and define this love in a neat package that gives you the ability to pat yourself on the back and say "well done" and to be able to see that and know it in others, but the real source of "well done" is in our hearts, with the love source we draw from. That source asks nothing but being alive for you to experience that love. There are moments where we get close enough to our own heart to hear it. Those are usually the moments when we have lost everything on the outside that was defining us, leaving us in a state where our heart begins its journey of being unburied from the beliefs that bind it and keep it from expressing its truth. The beginning is usually the hardest place, the deepest grief, the most loss, that we finally shed enough to hear what our heart has know all along, but it may be packed in some extra weight, do-gooding, illness etc etc……………the list can go on and on and when you are doing the list, you are mostly unaware. I spent a long time unaware until the loss was greater than my ability to pretend and hold up the facade of pretense any more. Now, it is a journey of my heart and love. It is a good place to be, messy but good.

A Quest of love ……...

I think all of my life there has been an imbalanced focus or lack of understanding about the parts that make up a person, and of course since my only experience, hands on in this is mine, that is what I need to talk about. It has created a dilemma that has left me swirling at times. The parts of me that I gave a voice and importance are crowding out the voice of those I refused to hear. So, as people who are we, what makes us alive and unique and what gives our life meaning? Speaking for myself, relationships have and are important to me. My life as a wife, as a mother, daughter, sister particularly of importance is family relationships. Those have held an upmost priority in my life. But for as long as I can remember there has been place that I felt was crying, when I was busy in those other roles, especially in times of great demand or need the tears were not heard or seen, but when the need slows down, the demand quiets there is place inside that is always crying. For a long time I didn't know what it was, just thought I needed to work harder in the other roles, but at night when no one was there to need anything, the knot felt so tight, sometimes it was grief, sometimes fear, sometimes hopelessness, always just under the surface. When I had epiphanies that left me feeling like there was more to me than these roles, I felt powerful and excited about life, but it could never last as the belief pounded me that made those roles define everything, but not from my perspective, but from an external source of "knowledge", faulty knowledge. Another person had looked at roles, based on relationships and gender and decided what my life needed to be driven by. How does that happen, well the culture, family, society, church,education the all contribute and we take and create our own sense of what they are saying, maybe not always a healthy perception of what they are saying. And so that was the place that I lived, day in and day out, until slowly, and little by little I felt something inside of me dying. The emptiness of being nothing more than defined by my roles, by what I perceived someone else wanted me to be, began to overtake my heart that was crying out for a purpose that was influenced, but not defined by my roles. I ached to learn and move and talk and listen to people. I yearned to speak and be heard and needed only as a person with passion and life to share and participate with others in their sharing. I longed to have my story heard, not the story of being a mother of my children, not the story of another relationship, but the story of my heart,with a wholeness that falls in love with people and plants and love and places and more people I want a relationship with life and love, in and out of this world, meeting others on their own journey of heart. So my heart, I have been having trouble defining it without relationships. You see so long have those dictated how I saw myself and through those beliefs I chose to put all things relationship ahead of all things that I might need, or things that would bring life to my soul through my own personal journey. Now, I sit here and wonder about how to hear my heart again. How to choose without automatically discounting myself, for that is what I have done and I don't know if I know how to do something different than that anymore. I feel the tear in my heart as I yearn to be able to let go of the ideas that I, my needs, my desires and my heart, can not factor into my choices, Those are an afterthought because it is my role to take care of everyone else's fears and needs, as though there is nothing I would or could need other than to lose myself in this process. Now, I am fortunate in that my husband, though at times in our life he has been a part of the demand that exceeded the ability I had, has come to a place of seeing that without being seen as a whole person, without my needs being factored in to the equations along with everyone else that I am in relationship with, that I will die. But the interesting thing about his is that although he is encouraging me and hoping for a future with a greater wholeness for me, I am still struggling with making the choice, so despite being given permission from outside of myself, from this relationship, I realize that the person that really needs to give me permission to live and have a space in the world is me. Without that I will continue to re-create the same story over and over again. Never letting go in my mind means re-creation in my outer world. There are times that I have thought I would like to walk away from all of the relationships and go to where no one knows me and I could be alone to take care of my needs. There have been times that was an appealing thought, it felt like maybe then I could finally rest, but I realized that although that seemed appealing, without the change in my own value system regarding myself, I would choose myself right back into the same situation where I again have lost myself and my hope for the growth of my own soul, in favor of the pattern of self deprivation, that I glorify and that initially gives me a sense of purpose, although this is not sustainable. In looking at my needs, and my strengths, what I know is that I need to be solving problems, I need people, but I need alone time, I need to create, I need to talk and I need to listen, I need to learn and I need to teach. I need to be strong and I need to be vulnerable. I need flexibility, but I also need structure. What I realize is that I am complicated, no one else could look at this and tell me what I should do and how I should meet those needs. The real story here is the story of me, opening my heart to myself, having and forging a relationship with my own soul. I think about how in working with children with attachment challenges, how delicate and understanding a person must be, knowing that they will open up and run away, knowing they will be afraid, and also brave. That there is a pile of opposites that because of their fears of not being seen or heard for so long that they will struggle up against and then run from. Here I sit with the same kind of struggle as I have watched in some of the children I have worked with and I recognize that I have been the instrument of my own pain and that I must also become the instrument of my own healing. I must search out the beliefs that have caused me to treat myself this way and see the effect that I am having on myself as I walk through each day. Nobody else can do this for me. I have to uncover the pieces of my heart that I buried long ago and bring them out and cherish them again. There is no quick fix to a problem that has been created through so many years, so like I could with a child, I must start, start small and continue to know what to hold onto to keep stepping into the fear that grips me,and I must be gentle. The definition of failure has to redefined in my mind. The story is mine and only I hold the key, the relationships I have can be a support, but the real quest and vision of this journey I must hold. I know that I must come up square against the belief that I cannot know without an external source telling me how this should look. There is a value system inside of me. I am driven by love and the desire for congruency between the things of importance in my life and the things of action. Perhaps the reason why I recognize the sadness and despair as incongruence between my needs and my actions, but I must create the congruence. There is no other source that has the power or ability to delve right into the heart of the matter with God and I. God and I cannot source this one out, for we are the only ones that truly knows my story, and you, you are the only one that knows your story and so you and I must be the authors, finishers and developers of the truth in our own lives. So, ask the questions, hold the fear and sadness up to the light and begin the quest of love with God for your soul.

Of Desire…..

Here I sit with a foot on both sides of the line. I have already left, but the beliefs run deep leaving a schism of pain, sadness and fear. The beliefs of where and how my worth is determined and designed, where happiness stems from, ideas about what should determine my destiny, what and how emotions play a part in the whole experience here. So, to break those down and look at the incongruity that creates a dilemma, let's start with worth and place/role in life, they are kind of tied together since we really derive our worth from our work. There fore the work that I choose is illusory of my identity, my strengths, my desires, passions and deepest longing of my life. Correct….????? When I was a child as every young girl there is a fascination with having babies, holding them and playing house. As I needed my mother so, I played in fascination for the time when I too could play that role. It was an innate instinct in me to protect and to nurture the young, the sick, the hurt. As I grew older, I became aware of other parts of myself. I loved to dance, do sports, sing, play the piano, grow plants, paint, learn meet people etc…… In determining who I would become, what course of action to take the dye was set. For I was a woman and as we are taught there really is only one course of action to be prepared for and that is marriage and children. The other parts of me fell to the wayside to make way for one dream. I have spent almost 30 years on that dream with little sense of the importance of the other parts of my being. For many of these years I have struggled feeling sad and lost, though I loved deeply my children and wanted nothing more than to be with them, except I began to realize that I not just wanted to, but needed to also be with me. One of my children when she was younger told me that she did not want to be like me when she grew older because she wanted to have a life. I always thought that I did , but then I realized that it was kind of a secret life, that if no one else had any needs I might sneak something in for myself and then feel a little guilty because as any mother knows there is never a time when realistically there is a lack of something to do for your husband or children. My daughter was telling me that she loved being able to learn and be alive and she didn't want to have to give that up when she became a mom.

 "Gladly losing herself in service to her husband and children, she has shown a courageous determination to magnify what she knows is the divine and glorious calling of being a worthy wife and mother."(Ezra T. Benson)

 So, the idea is that we are taught to lose ourselves in serving our families, but then when we are lost in service is there a point when we have so little to give that we sink into depression, a deep sadness of wishing hoping and wanting and having it, but it is always out of our reach? I want to address these ideas and what I have come to see and understand The first premise that all of these ideas stem from is the external sense of knowing vs and internal sense of knowing

* "To all of you there is only one way to safely and confidently meet the obstacles and opportunities that are part of life’s path. First, listen to the prophet and the apostles. Study the principles we teach. Then take those principles to the Lord and ask Him how you should apply them in your life. Ask Him to influence your thoughts, temper your actions, and guide your steps. “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good” (Alma 37:37). He will communicate with you through the power and presence of the Holy Ghost."

 The first place we are taught to look is to an external source of power, there is a lesson here that we do not have the understanding, nor the insight without this external direction to guide our own lives. It is a rather discouraging concept to base decisions on. It leaves you constantly wondering if you understood the right external message. The prophet says, the spirit says, God says…. we are trying to bring their messages into our internal, turn off our own ideas and hold theirs up to the light to create the reflection which will guide us. That sounds like a sound plan from the perspective I used to hold, but experientially I came to know such a sense of powerlessness about my own choices, because I was taken out of the mix. First and foremost my needs and desires were considered wrong or bad unless they fit with a certain set of parameters meted out by the external sources that we look to. I would refer you the rest of my blog where I have written about some of these issues. http://simplicity-truth.blogspot.ca. To trust, Separate and Distinct, Teach your mind to Listen, The power of Christ in our Lives, The Voice of Pain are some of the entries that have looked at the issue of delegating from our deepest desires and knowing to an external source. One of the things I have come to understand very deeply about this is the fact that my knowing and connecting with God is innate, He is a part of me and like my children will always have my sense of knowing through my DNA and their life, I too no matter what can never get away from his voice. I am horrified at the thought that if I were to teach my child not to cross the road without looking and heaven forbid they did, forgot, got careless, or outright disobeyed and got hit by a car ,that because of their erring when I had told them not to ,that at that moment when they might be most injured I would walk away and refuse my presence, refuse to offer guidance and support. It is a ludicrous thought, but it is just what we are taught.

*"The stunning reality, my dear brothers and sisters, is that you control how close you are to the Lord. You determine just how clear and readily available promptings from the Holy Ghost will be. You determine this by your actions, by your attitude, by the choices you make, by the things you watch and wear and listen to and read, and by how consistently and sincerely you invite the Spirit into your life."(Ballard) 

That is like telling my children that it is up to them how much I will love and help them and that they determine our relationship by how "good " they are…… shockingly incredulous thought. Yes there are things they can do, but by virtue of the fact that they are mine I will always be there for them and unless they tell me they want to be alone or handle the problem themselves, my help is always available, and even at that by virtue of our relationship they will never be without hearing my voice and the love that I have for them, even if not externally. How shockingly sad that our sense of belonging and worth should be tied to how "good" we can be, and that there is a sense that we must earn our worth as opposed to simply have it because we are. My children will never have to earn their worth in my eyes. They belong to me and as a result of our relationship their worth is innate and no matter what they do it is there.

 *"Of this you may be certain: The Lord especially loves righteous women—women who are not only faithful but filled with faith, women who are optimistic and cheerful because they know who they are and where they are going, women who are striving to live and serve as women of God."(M. Russell Ballard) "A righteous woman is a student of the scriptures. Many apply uniquely to her life." (Russell M. Nelson) "Her self-esteem cannot be based on physical features, possession or lack of a particular talent, or comparative quantities of anything. Her self-esteem is earned by individual righteousness and a close relationship with God. Her outward glow is generated by goodness within."(Russell M. Nelson)

 And so I need to declare that I know now that I have never had to earn my worth and that always in the deepest recesses of my heart is the voice and love of the supreme power and essence of the universe- God. When I feel sad and discouraged, lonely or weighed down, I have discovered he is speaking to me. He hasn't left me, those feelings are there to invite me to hold them up to his light, to be seen through love, through the deepest desires of MY heart, the deepest needs of MY life, not filtered through an external source, in fact not filtered at all, only illuminated by his love and the insight his love brings to MY desires. Desires is another area of taboo, to have a desire is simply rejected in any form. We are taught to move from duty, obligation and a sense of external morality, and that our desires are something to be afraid of, that alone without all of the obligations and external sources of guidance we have no hope of being brought closer to Christ .

 " A woman teaches priorities by precept and example. Recently I watched a television program in which a female lawyer was being interviewed. She was at home with her child on a full-time basis. When asked of her decision, she replied, “Oh, I may go back to the law sometime, but not now. For me, the issue is simple. Any lawyer could take care of my clients, but only I should be the mother of this child.” "Such a decision is made not in terms of rights but in terms of obligations and responsibilities. She knows that as she rises to meet responsibilities, rights will take care of themselves."(Russell M. Nelson) 

We do not need things to be about rights, we have the desire, a yearning for something that will fill our soul, that is our right. That guides our process and leaves us complete. I abhor the thought of choosing to be the mother of my children and stay at home to care for them due to obligation. How far does obligation carry us when the heart of the matter is in a different place than what we are choosing. How long can we force ourselves without consequences, to hear the voice of another while disregarding our own. In education, when there is desire the learning curve leaps forward,and then needs become met, through the innate desires - when desires are understood and heard all are edified. I had this experience at one point in my life of having an injury that needed physical therapy. The therapist told me that he needed to see me three times a week, for roughly three to four hours a session to achieve what we needed to. I had four children, who I was homeschooling at the time. I thought it impossible, they could no do without my guidance for that kind of time, nor did it feel right. I felt obligated to be at home with them. I determined that the medical need made it impossible for me not to act on this issue and so I choose to go. For several months I left to take care of this problem and what I came to understand was rather enlightening. The real benefit was to my soul. I got to walk out the door of my house and for a few hours at a time I got to be just a person. I got to laugh with other adults, create friendships, think and hold myself rather gently. What amazed me was how this impacted our home. I was happier. The kids were happier, my marriage was better. We give permission for those things due to medical or health needs, but what of the mental health, how long do we "fake it until we make it". Our desires are the basis for our mental health, if they go unspoken, unheard and unheeded for long periods of time we can be assured that the pain will begin to creep in and eventually over take us. I learned the only way out of self sacrifice was to be sick. It was the only excuse that brought compassion, love, instead of judgment and criticism. I have heard so often the blame placed on a mother for the challenges of a child, right into adulthood, and I am guilty for wanting to promote that same thing. It is the first place my thoughts go when I hear of an errant child,……. must be the mothering….

 "I do not wish to wound any feelings, but all of us are aware of instances of active Latter-day Saint families who are experiencing difficulties with their children because mother is not where she ought to be—in the home."(Ezra T. Benson) "The seeds of divorce are often sown and the problems of children begin when mother works outside the home. You mothers should carefully count the cost before you decide to share breadwinning responsibilities with your husbands."(Ezra T. Benson) 

So, as a child, my first awareness was of my femininity, my desire to love and nurture, but I as a person am filled in by the rest of my strengths, needs and desires. And so, though there is a part of me both physically and emotionally/spiritually that yearns and loves to bring life and love to the world, there are many ways this takes form to bring full fruition and life to my soul. One of the things that I have learned is that I am the greatest gift to my children. That sounds like a curious statement, but as I heal and bring wholeness and desire to my soul, and as I base my choices on the love and desires implanted in my heart by God, not by some external source outside of myself, by the resonate frequency of my heart and desire and deepest yearnings, those are the gifts and permission that I offer to my children to have in their own life. There seems to be a sense that if I choose the things that are my deepest desire it means that I will neglect my children and those that I love. Again, that is a ridiculous assumptions, since when does my having a heart and voice and needs mean that I offer nothing to the people that I love. As a child I saw all of those things in myself, why would I need to lose most of who I am to offer anything, and everything to just one part of who I am . It is like being crippled, using only one aspect of my being to live life, invites a host of problems of imbalance, which inevitably will lead to mental illness, if not physical illness. We are whole beings, body, mind and spirit. We hear each part of our soul, not one over the other. My role in life for eternity must resonant with my heart and soul, not through the heart of an organization, but the real essence of this challenge is the belief that I do not have the capacity to connect with God and deeply understand my needs for continued progress and potential growth without an external source.

 "Important lessons about her divine mission may be learned from women of the scriptures. Mother Eve was a great example. She labored beside her husband as a partner. They both knew the plan of salvation. They both heeded commandments of obedience to God. Likewise, she prayed for divine guidance. She bore children. She taught the gospel to them. (See Moses" "A woman is a master communicator. And she communicates best in humble prayer. " "I honor women who are not mothers. They know that motherhood is but one of the realms of womankind. The virtue and intelligence of women are uniquely applicable to other realms as well, such as compassionate service and teaching."

 Here we are told exactly what that will look like, each of our strengths as women fall into these categories. What does it mean to labour beside a husband or a partner. I have no issue with that, but when there becomes a need for mother to find a space as a person, with a mind a heart, the laboring can and will look differently than that prescribed by the "authorities" solution to all problems. The funny thing is I know some woman who are not great communicators at all. It has nothing to do with being a woman. It is a strength that some have and some do not, along with nurturing and compassion. There are plenty of women that service, compassion and teaching are not their forte at all. Lets get real here, as a woman I am unique and distinct in my needs and contributions to the world. What will be the solution that I seek may not be for another woman. We are virtually all capable of bringing life into the world, but not all of us have the same hungering and development of our nurturing potential. I have watched many mothers. I don't know that I can say I have seen one that I am sure didn't love their children, or nurture, care and protect them. That happens when a woman conceives, and of course it is not limited only to a physical conception of a child, but many other ways of conceiving creates that same protective love that a woman brings . A woman knows what it looks like to mother a child. No one needs to tell her and the more we say about how she should do that, the more dignity we take from the women who must service their own needs at the same time as those of their families. What does selflessness really mean? Scary and destructive the way I was taught, but when we fill ourselves and become accountable for our own needs and desires and the choices we make, that becomes beautiful and incredibly powerful to both mother, child, and spouse. That is when we really begin to find life and find it in abundance. To live from a place of self accountability, meaning that I will take responsibility for my needs, desires and choices and allow you the same privilege. I will not make my choices in a codependent way. I will not take responsibility for your needs, desires and choices, they are yours, but in the scheme of things, if you are my child or spouse, I will be aware of your needs, choices and desires and they will also filter through mine and my love for you. They cannot take precedence over mine, or I would be empty and have nothing to offer you, but I promise they will be heard and important. I don't ask for anything more in this relationship of love in my family life, but the understanding that we are each accountable to ourselves and we live not in expectation and obligation, but in expectancy of the love we share. We do not try to control all in our power, but live in our power and hope to find peace in what we cannot control.

About Knowing and My Heart…………..

I spent all of my life thinking about all the things that I knew, or thought that I knew. They impacted every choice that I made, every thought that came through my mind was directed by my "knowing". I took pride in what I knew and felt special that I knew things that others did not. From there I felt that my knowing gave me a special place in the world. Unconsciously, that place was above those that did not know, leaving me responsible for their knowing, as well as maintaining the life that one who knows lives. This unravelled for me little by little. There was such an immense pressure to perform, Holding so much, when others had so little. I fought inside and out to bring congruency and meaning to the outer actions, but wondered about the inner feelings of emptiness. The only hold on me was the knowing distributed by sources outside of myself and wanting so badly to be part of those who knew, and finding the knowing myself. The emotions were so deep, to compensate for the loss of knowing my own soul. I ached to be seen and ached to be know, but instead of the personal intimate peace that comes from hearing your own heart, I was left with the aching that comes when a person adopts what they surmise, or are told is so and then have all of the privileges of that externally given knowing. It is hard to pass up. Each person wants so deeply to belong and be part of a community, to have a place that belongs to them. That too, was fickle and determined by others. Were you able to outwardly personify the beliefs and hold others in such a way that they too felt the impressions and emotions of the system of thought? If so, you could be elevated in stature and position,or calling leaving you with a sense of belonging, and a sense of being valued, not for who you are/were, but for your ability to hold the space in the system. So, there was a drive to search the written words that told us what was inherent in the system to know. The nature of the knowing was based upon emotional responses in your searching, as well as the impressions of others upon the answers and external responses to the searching. It seemed as if the community was necessary to deliver the proper set of circumstances to experience and maintain a sense of "knowing". But if truth really does prevail, If God is truly greater the any other force in the universe, than should we not see his hand and truth above all else, alone or in a community? This is a difficult subject that many people have studied deeply and done much work on trying to understand the impact of communities on beliefs and the impact of leaving a community of belief. But, going back to knowing, I have experienced several sources of knowing and the most powerful of those is the experiences that truly combine all of the sources into one experience. But, the question is what can we really know? And how do we know it? To start with I always think of relationships, they seem to personify an archetypal experience that transfers to many other experiences, creating a type of knowing unique to seeing patterns. So, in relationships……If we are to develop a relationship with a person that we just met what might the criteria be for interest and safety as we invite another person into our soul. A few things come to mind, the first is trust. If I cannot open myself to you and fully disclose, neither can I receive you and there will be little purpose for the experience of being together. To develop trust, an ability to invite a person in and to receive another person the foundation is the ability to do that very thing with and for yourself. That sounds really easy, but can easily be manipulated away by cultural thinking. You think you need to act or operate in a certain way, due to the ideas around that action, not really by the real knowing of our soul on the course of action. So, if we think that we know, then we cannot hear what we do not know, leaving us in a feedback loop that we cannot break until we actually admit that we do not know and cannot know some things. So, why is this important? Knowing has three components, an emotional/spiritual component that is a resonant feeling of affirmation about the space we are holding and the direction we intend to move. The other part is experiential. The last is an intellect learning about the thing, experience, whatever it is we are trying to understand The experiential part is important to be able to translate the combination of our emotions/spirits and our reasoning. The experiential part is what breaks down the walls of belief that we set up predetermining what we think we know. It is through those experiences coupled with the resonant feelings and the learning that draw a complete picture of knowing. In talking about knowing, what I am really talking about is not "I know this fact." It is a overall impression of positiveness, hope, goodness, wholeness to ourselves and others, or conversely that there is a clear feeling of discord, loss of hope, fear, etc. This kind of knowing does not lead me to know what someone else is thinking on a factual basis or what a person in history may have intended in his actions, no what we are talking about is overall patterns and clarity about direction and resonance vs discord in your life and culture. So, when I say that I do not know, what I may mean is that I don't have the facts and I know that. And, I am ok with that, but what I do have is the underlying feelings and patterns that a certain course of action of thought process leaves me with. The important thing I have found in this is the real objectivity of what is there. I do not know, nor do I need to "know" to understand the patterns, not the facts, to see what life is behind the experience. Is it a life that has been built on honesty? Is it built on respect of persons? Does it hold one person above another, or are all of equal value and equally heard and cherished, in actions as well as word? Is there an inner representation of the outward action, or is there just fear permeating the inward, hoping that perhaps someday it will get better? Is there a sense of openness and allowance for each person's journey, or is there a specific way and order that if a person does not follow they do not have equal value or voice, and are perhaps reprimanded or shunned for their perspective? Is there a place for those who do not "know", that is sincere, honest and gentle, not contrived, the subject of gossip or assigned? Those are the things that I am looking for. Is the basis a sense or is there a sense of "it need it to be something specific" in order to be vindicated, or right. We can emotionally want to be somewhere and convince ourselves easily of what we see and what appears to us, but experience can bridge the gap left by emotion alone. How does that work? Over and over again we choose, we choose based on group think, sometimes, based on anger, sometimes based on fear, sometimes based on real desire and resonance , we swing around and around between all of those, and only through experience can we begin to interpret what the emotions around our actions mean. What this really means is that knowing is a process, not a one time event. So many times in life in our immaturity or the stage in our process that has a deep learning curve and we think we understand it all, only to move just a little further to find out that we really knew nothing that we thought we knew and find ourselves embarrassed at how we overlaid our beliefs upon others, not hearing, seeing or even knowing them at the same time as we were ardently declaring how much we knew and saw those same others. We had no idea of their feelings of aloneness, their feeling of despair and loneliness, as we sat vindicated in our belief, never hearing, never seeing, blind to ourselves and blind to others. And so to know, we must admit our ignorance and have a beautiful peace in all that we do not know. That is the real faith. For if God really does guide his children, then the honest admission of not knowing would garner the greatest support from a loving God. In relationships, it does, honesty is the key and foundation, not pretending that you are something you are not, being something on the outside, empty on the inside. We must honestly admit the fact that we are children in the learning of things of the heart, things of the spirit and finding also in finding an opening to your heart. This is the first step in finding the space and voice in your own heart. The first honest step of knowing is your heart……………..the real test of faith and vulnerability is being with your own heart.