July 19

PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 19: “A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen

I am less inclined, today, to jump into fixing situations that appear to be broken. An interesting example is watching others when someone is sad or upset. Our culture has trained us to seek a “fix” for that. The only thing that heals these feelings is time spent with them. We are programmed to run from them, avoid them, evade them, cover them, and do other things in order to not be present to our feelings of emotional pain and loss, anger, grief, etc. Add to that the addicts’ need for immediate gratification and we see why so many of us get here with no idea about who we are and what we are feeling. We have lost the ability to sit with our own or others’ pain and what we too often call “negative” emotions. No emotions are negative or positive. We just have fondness for happiness; and do not understand that the only way we get to experience great joy is when we gain the ability to sit still with deep sadness and sorrow. We have learned the skill of falling into denial with everything that we do not like; illness, death, disease, endings of any kind, change of many kinds, and grief. All of these things are certain in life; all of these things are going to happen…it is guaranteed for each of us. How we walk through the situations is going to determine how much pain is involved. When we can wait with our grief and sadness, wait with our loss, wait with our anger, we get to see how healing it can be to allow the emotions to burn through the parts of our lives that we are less than reluctant to embrace. Pain is the byproduct of resistance. When I resist pain and anger or grief, I am ensuring that it will continue and grow until it throws me on the floor and has its way with me…not a great experience. I can run, but I cannot hide and I have done a tremendous amount of damage to both myself and the world around me by not sitting still with my pain and grief. Anger, well, yeah, we have a whole set of steps just for that stuff! So, for me, the process of waiting for emotions to pass is that I acknowledge them, then I sit with them and wait for the breeze of life to blow through the openings where my heart was just broken; knowing this will heal me faster and stronger than I ever healed before. I do not quantify it or analyze it, I just let it BE. I poke it and hit it and let it know I am not pleased it has come to my life, but I really want to sit with it so that healing can occur. Healing is not something I get from other people. Healing is something I get when I sit with myself and the monsters of rage and pain are let loose to do their worst and I find out that they cannot kill me and that I have been forged in the fires of life and come out stronger than I could have ever imagined. Healed people are no longer angry and in need of attention from the world around them. They are strong and going forward to help others heal because they have found that their story works best when shared with those that are looking for healing, too. Healing and sitting with self are private and work best when presence is felt by those who would love me but are not in that experience. I can take that love and walk into the pain and grief and allow it to take me to its places and then emerge from that and be with their love. I need the safety of knowing I can come through and out of that space, but I have to do it all alone. At least that is my experience; and, I find that I am willing to sit much more quickly today than I was in the beginning times when it was necessary. It does pass more quickly when my healing is a process I go through instead of around.