The truth has been bubbling up to the surface lately – I’m not well.
I’m not fully unwell, but I am on the brink of sliding from surviving to spiraling.
It’s taking all my effort to maintain the day to day expectations and every disruption to this effort inches me closer to the edge.
I’ve been “hanging in there” so long that I’ve let parts of myself grow numb.
It’s a pandemic. My life has remained comfortable but it’s also had to shift. I’m not unaware of the suffering in the world around me. I’m not unaware of the cruelty of people to one another. I’m not unaware of the callous coldness of “the way it is”.
I have been neglecting my most powerful spiritual practice – writing it out. In the neglect the words have sought more willing vessels. And I have sought those vessels. I have sought the language for the knowings that I have not been able to voice in my numbness, in my neglect.
I have over-thought this practice as if it is not a gifting. I have thought maybe there’s no need or no place. I have anticipated damage and resistance from the world around me. I have forgotten myself completely.
I don’t exist to be acceptable. My purpose is not to maintain the ways of the world. I don’t need a niche. The target audience is whoever is open and able to welcome or entertain the words.
I can’t care more about the people who misunderstand or dislike what I write more than I care about the practice of channeling the Spirit this way. The fullness of my gifting is not limited to what other people are comfortable with or what they find appropriate. I can’t let my words be boxed in by the desire to be able to prove myself or the truths within. I have to write light and darkness. I have to write all the nuances of these things, I can’t only be palatable and presentable.
I ache for freedom to exist in the world as a full human being and my writing aches this way too. That will be too much and not enough for maybe everyone but there is a peace and resting in writing it out, whatever it is.
I know everything a person does ripples from them to the people around them and I have thought myself careful and imagined my restraint was love but maybe it was fear. Maybe it was distrust in the Divine Creator who gifted me this way. Arrogance that I thought I could offer more protection than the Holy Spirit. Fear that my whole self is disruptive to the spaces I inhabit once I stop playing along. I’ve never meant to be deceptive in the act of making myself acceptable, but eventually it feels as if that’s what I’ve been – to myself and others. How do you slowly reveal yourself as a whole person?
