My dad called me yesterday. "Get ready for an outpouring of love and adoration," he said, and then told me he had posted a link from my blog to the Free Believer's Network and his facebook page.
And boy, he was not kidding. I have read and reread those comments many times.
In the last few days, things have been falling into place for me. I seem to be adjusting to a greater degree of authenticity in all areas of my life, giving up illusions and embracing reality. This is what happens, I think, when one has the courage to be completely real about oneself; the rest of the world comes into better focus.
For example, I am seeing my parents in this whole new way. I am seeing them as people, as adults. I am able to see their imperfections not with the angst of the teenager, or even the fervent, over forgiving belief that they are what I want them to be, but instead with the clarity of the adult. In fact, I like them more because of their imperfections, it makes them them. I feel like my heart has been hugely enlarged because of this. I don't just love my parents, I like them and I like them because they are unique, flawed, colorful individuals just like I am.
Then, as a natural progression of this, I was able to give my mother the incredible gift of seeing into her heart and grieving with her over her pain. It was a gift I gave freely, as one adult woman to another, as one who knows the exact nature of that pain.
It is as though I am looking at a whole new phase of my life, one that is tempered, almost defined by the fact that I am an adult and that life is short. I don't feel morbid about it, it's just that I am looking into middle age. That knowledge has an effect on me like the moon on the oceans, I'm moved and shaped by it.
I think this must be happening in part because I am going back and releasing and freeing those parts of me that had still been trapped, for better or for worse, in my childhood. Trapped by the repression of memories, or by the fear of an old god or by illusions I didn't want to let go of.
But now I am letting go. I am coming to terms with my childhood and my life in a much more thorough way then I could before and that frees me to move forward and to accept my adulthood.
It was the anger that was the key to all this. I thought all along that anger was a bad thing and had no good purpose. But I was denying myself an integral part of my humanity and holding up the latter part of my healing.
I am also so much more at peace with my solitary nature. That is who I am, that is what I was created to express. I am a quiet creature who basks in the quiet pleasures of life and who moves through solitude like a fish in water. It's my element. Maybe society does not recognize natures of my sort, but that doesn't make our way of life illegitimate, it just illustrates the fact that society by its nature requires ardent participants and therefore values them greatly.
Also, I have let go of the judgement that I am being selfish in my solitude. I am not, in fact, I am incredibly generous. There is more than one way of ministering to the world at large, more than one way of relating to it. And my way is through words and through words I pour out and reveal the depths of my heart. This is a true ministry and deeply meaningful and dovetails with my solitude.
In fact, it seems as though all along I have been expressing the personhood I was meant to be. And I fell into it in a natural way, as one might guess would happen, if one thought about it. A true ministry does not have to require anguish, as I previously thought. How could a ministry be viable if I enjoy it? was my question. Now I might well ask, "How could it be a ministry if I do not?"
One cannot overlook the obvious fact that marriage is the hardest, most pleasurable and binding ministry there is and I am deeply invested in mine.
Between the two of them, I am leading a life of great and purposeful meaning, all without having a vibrant social life or a home church or a blackberry or a woman's group. Or children, for that matter.
Though soon, I will add to add them via adoption and begin the work of parenting. I look forward to it and I have lately been able to give up the idea of "running out of time" or of there being the right age to be a parent.
There is no way I am ever going to be a young mother. That option in life is closed for me; it will never be a part of my life. Instead, I can move on and embrace the fact that I will be in my middle to late thirties when I begin the work of parenting, that I may well adopt or have children in my forties. This will be the shape and the reality of my life.
And once I gave up the, what now appears to be ridiculous, idea of there being an "ideal" age for parenting and have come to terms with what will never be, I feel released, free to enjoy what is real. And I will deeply enjoy being a parent.
I will love my life the way it is, and all because I gave myself permission to be deeply, horribly angry about the fact that it wasn't the way I first wanted it to be. I'll keep doing this work for the rest of my life, because as Buddha has said, "Life is suffering," and as M. Scott Peck has added, "Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."
-The Road Less Traveled
