Sunday Prayer

A Personal Prayer Offered To My Higher Power

Sharing my heart during these dark times seems like the right thing to do. Be gentle dear ones.

Dear Goddess,

Please be with me today. Help me to just be, to live in each breath and to feel each moment.

Help me to focus with gratitude on what shows up for me today and keep me from wanting what is not available. Help me to embrace the truth and to rid myself of wishful or deceitful thinking.

Be with me as I keep my heart open, even when it wants to close. Help me to receive all of the goodness and love that is available to me today.

Help me to accept any hurts or violations of boundary and let my hurt tell me what needs to be done.

Help me to know my truth and not to allow anyone to talk me out of it with slick words or masked intentions.

Help me to inhabit my body as a fully awake woman who is able to handle and process any sensations that arise because I am the decider of my actions. My feelings and my body do not control me, they just inform me.

Be with me when old habits call like an old, comfy sweater to lure me away from new habits and adventures. There will be other sources of comfort on this journey and the old ones won’t fit anymore. Help me to have patience and calm while the way is made clear and new comforts are prepared.

Help me to never feel shame for the love I have in my heart that bubbles up and bursts out of me and onto others. It is not too much, it is not meant to be kept inside. It is a gift, not a weakness to love and to share it is brave. Holding it in is what scared people do. I don’t have to be scared and sharing my heart with safe people is the most important thing I can do right now.

Be with me as I tackle responsibilities that make me doubt my strength and abilities. Never, ever have I failed to survived anything that has tested me. Please have my back and remind me when I forget, that I am a badass.

Lastly, please look after the hearts of those I love. My people keep me sane, strong, and humble. I need them and I want them safe and loved. Let us all be an example of living with in open heart, a humble heart, full of love even when the world tells us to close it, to protect it and to fear.

Help me to embody a fully alive, brave, strong, empathetic, and love filled woman today. Help me to play, rest, work, create, and to love my people and myself well.

Amen

Darkness and Confusion

Embracing the darkness and confusion in my life is hard but I’m doing it.

The hard truth is that life can be dark and very confusing. I always thought I had to stay positive, keep my chin up, and make it better. Well that is exhausting and it doesn’t work. So I’m learning to embrace the darkness, the uncertainty, and the confusion. The road to this space has been long and it is still a work in progress but it is good.

We are taught early on that the dark is scary. I remember being so afraid of our basement, closets, and attic space as a child because they were dark. I would avoid them, especially at night and was afraid to go in them alone. I really thought something in there was going to get me.

I spend so much of my adult life avoiding the dark as well. I didn’t want to face my problems, look at my own faults, investigate or sit with the ugly and uncomfortable parts of my life. Nope, I was just going to fix it all and make it positive and light. I was willing to do anything necessary to force myself and others to be bright, cheerful, light, and positive. If it was dark, it was my enemy. I was always fighting.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the reason I was so afraid of the dark was because I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust that other people could be good even in the dark. I didn’t trust that I would be as protected in the dark as I thought I was in the light. And most of all, I didn’t trust my own strength to protect and guide myself through the darkness and confusion. I lived in white knuckle fear of anything that didn’t feel good and safe.

I can honestly say that I have been dragged kicking and screaming through intense darkness and confusion, and darn it all if I didn’t live. It is really hard to keep a belief going when you have mounting evidence to the contrary. I had not in fact died when I traveled through the darkest times in my life. I even discovered a strength and a beauty in that darkness that I never would have found had my life been all light and clear.

An example of this is living through a marriage to an addict. It was so dark, so confusing, and so character building. I made so many mistakes just trying to keep the darkness at bay. I enabled, I was mean, I slammed doors, I had zero compassion, and I betrayed myself. I accepted unacceptable behavior because I thought it would keep away the darkness, I didn’t know it was the darkness. Betraying myself was my darkest experience.

In that experience I learned that the only way out of the darkness and confusion is through it. As I traveled, I gathered a support system in the Al-Anon program. I gathered a strength I didn’t know I had. You know what, that isn’t true. I knew I was strong but I didn’t know I had the right to act out my strength to protect myself. I learned from strong women how to set up boundaries and to enforce them in service of myself. I learned I was worth protecting.

The darkness was where I found a Higher Power . I always believed in God, but I thought God lived in the light and that if I was in the dark, it was my own fault, like I had betrayed God or something. When I was in the dark, I reached out, not even knowing what God meant to me, but knowing that I could’t do it by myself. In those early dark days, I could not relate to the God I grew up with in the church. God couldn’t be a male for me then, I couldn’t trust men at that point in my life. So God to me in those early days was the sunset, the birds singing, the seasons changing. I went to nature to find God because it was the only thing I trusted.

That God was so good to me. Slowly leading me out of dark spaces, letting some light into my life. Lifting the confusion and giving me moments of clarity and direction. I imagined wrapping up my baby girl in a blanket of love and protection every time she wasn’t physically with me and praying that she be returned to me safely, and she always was. The evidence was mounting that this protection could be trusted.

In those dark and confusing times, we also had so much beauty. There was a rawness and a realness to our days that brought strength and love forward. I knew I was being led and protected. I knew I was also leading and protecting. When you are struggling and people reach out to help you, you see the best in people. You see community and you see compassion. And in suffering you realize that we are all in the darkness at different times and sometimes you help and sometimes you ask for help. It is our humanity.

I have been feeling a darkness and a confusion lately. There is darkness visiting me and people that I love. I have confusion and I have fear. There are times that I think it is too much for us all to handle and I want to just be transported to the light. But then I remember that nature has dark and light and they are about equal. It cannot be light all of the time. Darkness has to have its time and it doesn’t have to be bad.

I now know that I can trust myself in the darkness. That I will protect myself there and that I am guided and loved by a God that has my back even in the darkness, maybe even more so there. I no longer feel alone in the darkness, in fact I know that some of you are there too and that we will find the light again. And when we get to the light we will be changed because we have been in the dark. We will see the light differently. We will be stronger because we have traveled through darkness and confusion.

I know from experience that lessons are learned in the darkness. Boundaries set, strength found and often more will be revealed that will take us toward clarity and light. I have to go through a lot of anger, rage, sadness, upset, and sometimes depression in the dark. I’m not wrong or bad for feeling any of those things. I might feel differently as the journey goes on and more is revealed but I will not shame myself for how I feel in the dark.

Today I’m releasing some of my darkness onto this page, along with some of my light. I can be both. So can you. I used to hope I could out run the darkness and enter a phase of life that was only light. That was a fantasy and there is no out running darkness. Today I can embrace the dark knowing that it comes to mold me, shape me, teach me. I can enter it protected by a Higher Power who has a view of the bigger picture and never leaves me alone in the dark. Some times I’m in the dark because I need to rest. I can trust that darkness is visiting me and that the light will come too. And that there will be this dance of dark and light for the rest of my life, and it will be good.

I Love The Mountains

Every time I go there I feel closer to something bigger. 

I don't live in or near the mountains. In fact, I live in a valley, surrounded by flatland as far as the eye can see. It is beautiful with trees and flowers and water, etc. It is home and familiar. But when I go to the mountains, I feel something different. I think the word is awe. 

The very first time I went to the mountains was when I was in high school. I think I was on the verge of turning 14 or 15 and I went on a road trip out west with my friend and her family. We saw the Rocky Mountains, the Tetons, and Yellowstone. Before that we saw Mt. Rushmore. I could not believe my eyes. I felt like it was some sort of magic in the mountains. I felt awe. My very favorite spot was Artist's Point where the mountains are different colors like an artist painted them. I didn't have the words for the beauty I saw. I tried to capture it with my cheap film camera, but the pictures do not do it justice. 

The hiking, the forest, the waterfalls, the wildlife, the danger and beauty of the mountains was so exciting. I could not wait to go back someday. And while I haven't made it back out west, I have seen many mountains in my life since then. The Smokey Mountains, Mt. Vesuvius, the cliffs of Amalfi, Italy, Malibu, St. Lucia, Jamaica, I just feel called to them. When I am in them I feel myself connected to something bigger than me. I call that Spirit or Higher Power, or Goddess, etc. Whatever I call it, I experience it in the mountains. The views too pretty to think we could have thought of them. The waterfalls to wild to come from us. The trees too stubborn to follow our rules, growing out of sheer rock and standing straight against all odds. 

When I'm standing on the top of the world and I can see three states away, I feel small and humble, yet also powerful and inspired. Sometimes I wonder why I don't just go live in the mountains because I would love to feel that more often in my life. Maybe some day I will. But I also feel that way standing ankle deep in Lake Superior, or the ocean, or even a stream. I feel that way watching the birds and chipmunks out my kitchen window but it is less dramatic. 

The drama and intensity of driving in a car along the edge of a mountain face, or hiking on a small trail so close to the edge of the Earth with nothing to see but vastness, makes it impossible to ignore your limits and God's lack of them. My carsickness reminds me that I'm human and my body is limiting. The feeling I get watching the sun rise and set over those giant, vast, mountains reminds me that something out there created that and I don't have to understand it, tame it, conquer it or own it, I can just enjoy it while I can. 

I'm sitting back in Michigan today. It is flat, it is snowing, and it is cold. I'm struggling to remember that the same awe I felt in the mountains in available to me here. I feel a little lost without the big, beautiful things, the sunshine, and the fresh mountain air. But I'm going to keep looking. Maybe in the giant snowflakes falling outside my window. The cardinal in my cedar trees. The chickadee at my feeder. The fact that I wake up every day and that I'm able to do good things. All more proof that there is something bigger than me out there. Creating mountains, allowing me to get two six year olds back to school after a long break without losing my cool, even though we couldn't find folders, glasses, or computers, and reminding me to get back to writing because it brings me joy. 

I hope you find your mountain moment today. The one that makes you stop for just a moment today and realize that you are not all alone here and that there is so much to wonder at, to be in awe of. I'm trying my best today, it is not easy but I'm looking anyway. 

I Believe In Destiny

I can't say I understand it, but I believe

About 6 or more years ago I made a vision board. I had heard about vision boards on television and in magazines. I decided what the heck. I think I had just read "The Secret" and I wanted to create my own reality. I wanted and needed to have dreams. 

I gathered all my Oprah and AAA magazines and made my board. I had a variety of things on there like cute shoes, home decor color schemes, quotes that rang true to me and a few travel destinations. I also had a picture of what I imagined my inner child to be. She wore a swim suit, a swim floatie around her waist, had on rain boots, sunglasses and wild hair. I felt her in my soul but I didn't really know her yet. She was on my board. Some of the things I put on were just because they appealed to me visually. A guy riding a low tricycle with a fish kite on top?? I don't know. I liked the fun lunacy of it. Elephants were on my board, I love them. I love their maternal instincts, that the females stick together and that they mourn their dead.

My vision board has been hanging in my bedroom for a good long time. Every now and again I look to see if I've accomplished anything. I've started to search for and honor my inner child, and yes she is a beautiful, wild, fun mess. I've been looking for my strong tribe of women, like the elephants have, and I'm in the process of redecorating/remodeling my house. So yeah, I was getting some things done. The board was a good reminder of some of the goals I had. 

Last week though, I experienced destiny. To me destiny is when against all logic, you are exactly where you are supposed to be, when you are supposed to be there, with no control over it on your part. I went to Malibu California.  I did not pick this destination. It was picked for me. I was looking for some healing. By events outside my control, the person I was reaching out to for help and healing, moved to Los Angeles, California. We had agreed to meet in Malibu for the work. 

Having never been to Malibu or Los Angeles, I went online to get my bearing about where I would be staying and what was in the area. I was looking at beaches near the rental homes I was looking at and kept coming across the same picture. It was a white sign for the Paradise Cove beach in Malibu. I kept thinking that this sign looked familiar to me, I had seen it before. Weird, I thought. 

When I went up to my bedroom later that night, I saw it. It was on my vision board. That same sign that I kept seeing online was right there where it had been for the last six years. DESTINY! All of the universe conspired to get me to Malibu! Up until this point I had my doubts about traveling for this healing work. I was scared, I knew it would be expensive, I was in the middle of a house remodel and an extremely busy life. Was I ready? Was it the right time? Was it the right place with the right people? 

All of those questions and fears were answered when I saw that picture waiting there for me. It was a reassurance to me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to be, getting the help I needed to get with the people where were meant to help me. I believed in it and I believed in me. It was so exciting and comforting to feel this confirmation. 

Getting myself to California and doing the work that I wanted and needed to do was not easy. I wanted to run, quit, turn back, and doubt. In the back of my mind though was this picture. Of my vision board, in my bedroom in Michigan, made by my 6 or more years ago self. She didn't know this would happen, but she was courageous enough to believe it might. If she could believe back then, I could believe now and I would. 

To say that going to Malibu was life changing for me would be an understatement. It was one of the best things I've ever done and some of the hardest healing work I've ever done. The words "spiritual awakening" come to mind when I go back there in my mind. A coming home to me, to my life, to my true self, and to faith is what I gained. I'm so grateful for taking the risk, for following the signs along the way and for trusting myself, my path, and those set forth on it to guide me.

Like I said above, I believe in destiny. I don't understand it, I don't know how it all works, but I have experienced it, over and over in my life, in more powerful ways each time. Seeing the sign in real life, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, feet in the sand, gathering rocks and shells, eating a very overpriced but gigantic fish and chips with my person, I was home. I've already started a new board, this one is online and it is big. I'm excited to see where I go from here. Happy travels friends! 

Warrior Work Is Hard

Sometimes I have to go right back to the source

You might not know it if you just met me on the street, but I am a warrior woman. Most people who see me out and about in my town might say soccer mom, yes, frazzled grocery shopper, sure, warrior? Probably not. The thing about warrior women is that they are just normal women, fighting battles inside that they may never tell you about, but they are battles none the less. 

Being a warrior woman, to me, means that I'm a fighter. Not in a puff out my chest and blare my voice at you every chance I get way, but in a deep, strong, personal survival way. It is usually quiet, inside work that most people don't notice. It is one of the most difficult jobs on earth, for me, to fight for myself. 

I had learned over the years to let people have their way, to give of myself, to not rock the boat. It seemed easier than always fighting out loud, and honestly, most of it took place when I wasn't paying attention. When you are distracted by a job that drains the life out of you, you don't always have the energy to fight for your right to pizza over hot dogs. When you are going on two hours of sleep with newborn babies, you give up the fight about laundry, you don't have it in you to care. Then you start thinking that you'll just go along with whatever plans are made because you have too much to worry about as a wife, mother, and worker to think about what you really want. 

All of this sounds silly and I'm sure every wife and mother out there can relate on some level. But what happens while you are tired and distracted and exhausted, is that you can lose you. You can lose your voice, your power, and your sense of self. No one took it from you, you just let it slip away. This is where I found myself, and this is also where I became a warrior. 

I decided I was worth fighting for and that not knowing where my voice was was killing me. Every time I did something that I didn't want to do to please someone else, I sank further away from me. Every time I didn't share my feelings so that I didn't make someone else uncomfortable, I suffocated. 

Deciding that I was not going to do that anymore was a process. In fact I didn't realize that I was doing this warrior work until someone close to me pointed it out to me. I just thought I was having some confrontations, some upsets in my life, some changes. I thought that I was having problems honestly. I kept having people upset with me. I kept losing things that I thought were important and serving me but no longer seemed to be working out. 

The truth was that I was actively seeking out myself. I wanted to know what I wanted, what I felt, what mattered to me, and what my voice sounded like. I fought for the right to have a say. I fought for my best interests and the interests of my kids. I fought to be heard and seen in places where I had been silent and invisible. I started to see that some people only liked me if I did and said what they wanted but that my true voice was not welcome. 

I realized that I was not taking good care of myself and making sure that I was in relationship with people who would want me to be well. I needed people around me who would play nice, see me, and I was willing to fight for them. If you are not on my team, I don't think we can play. Sounds silly I know, but have you ever sat back and evaluated the people around you and if they are healthy and good for you? There were some surprises in that for me. I don't have to kick those people out of my life, but I do need to adjust my expectations of them and my interactions with them. 

Warrior work is hard. Like exhausting. Overwhelming. Walking upstream on slippery moss covered rocks kind of work. Fall asleep whenever you relax kind of work. Why? Because you are engaging your whole body system. In order to know who you are and what you need and want, you have to pay attention to yourself and your interactions with others. How do I feel? What is happening in my thoughts? What is happening in my body? Do I have words for this? Do I want something? Do I need something? Does this feel good, sound right, sit well with me? What does my head say? What about my gut? Am I well? Did I get enough sleep? How about the food I put in my body? Did I move around enough today to keep the energy flowing in my body? Is this person safe? How do they make me feel? What is our dynamic? Does it serve me? 

To be awake in your life, is exhausting at times. The only way I know to handle this is to connect to a source. It can be through prayer, it can be through music, nature sounds, or watching a sunset. Last week for me it meant laying down on the snow covered earth under the trees. I needed to feel something solid and real. I needed to know that something more powerful than me was in charge of the world. I needed to feel the cold, hear the wind, and watch the birds. 

Warrior work cannot be done alone. It is too much. You have to have a way to fill up and get some power or energy from the outside. No one can do warrior work alone. I am grateful to nature and its wonders that remind me in a way that I can see and hear and feel, that there is a source of energy that creates beauty daily without any help from me. I need that in my life. I'm still tired but I know that sometimes you have to put a lot of work in when something in new and that it won't always be this hard. 

The next time you see a frazzled looking soccer mom laying under the trees, leave her alone. She is filling up. She is all done and admitting defeat to mother nature, who has the ability to fill her back up with hope of beauty. She might be crying or yelling or dancing and hugging trees. Do not be alarmed, it is part of the process. She is fighting for herself in a world that would prefer her to forget. 

I Am Not In Charge

But maybe something bigger than me is. 

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm just not in charge. If I was we would probably be in trouble. I really, really like to imagine that I do have some control over my life and the life of those I love. Like if I do the right things, good things will happen, if I take the right path, it will lead me to where I want to be, etc. I have hopes, dreams, wishes for myself and other people and I start to think that I can make them all come true, because sometimes I get lucky and things go the way I want.

The truth is that I'm just not that powerful. This has been a hard truth for me to accept. I was in major denial. I think the reason it has taken me so long to accept this is because it has taken me a long time to realize that I wasn't as humble as I thought. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't trust anyone but me. This included my idea of God.

I was raised as a Catholic. I went to a Catholic school for thirteen years of my life. We went to church all the time as part of our school, we went on Sundays, we learned about our faith in our school classes. I wanted to believe in what I was told about God and Jesus but it just didn't ever sink to a level of trust for me. I liked the idea of someone or something being good and loving and in charge of my life, but I didn't really believe that. I used to see the little old ladies in the front row of our church praying their rosaries before Sunday service and think, maybe it happens when you are their age. Until then, I was on my own.

In my mid-twenties I was faced with a situation that tested my limits as a person. I did not know how to handle the situation and no one around me knew what to do either. I was introduced to a program of recovery where I was offered a spiritual solution to my problems. Oh boy, here we go again I thought, the God stuff. I entered the skeptic I had always been and I got a lot of what I had always gotten, drama, pain, frustration, fear, exhaustion.

One day I was at my absolute end. I knew I was either going to wind up in jail or a mental institution if I didn't find a new way to deal with an old problem. Someone I loved wasn't doing what I wanted them to do, what I knew was best for them. I sat there thinking of my options. I couldn't do what I had been doing. I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I was stuck. It was then that I remembered what everyone had been talking about all that time in my childhood and in my program, God could do things for me that I couldn't do for myself.

I got out some paper, I write, it is who I am. I wrote a letter to God (I didn't even really know what that meant to me on that day). In the letter I let God know all of the things that I had been trying to control and fix and force and be in charge of. I let God know that I was just letting it all go. I was giving up. Not in an I Quit way, but in an I'm going to trust that You have a better answer way. I cried, I felt guilty for letting go, but I let it go.

Things worked out that day and in the coming days in ways I would not have thought. Change was brought about by people I would not have trusted to help. It did not go the way I wanted for the other person, but I had peace of mind for the first time maybe ever. That was about 15 years ago. I take a long time to really learn things.

In the last 15 years, my ideas of God have changed often. I am on a spiritual path to find a personal relationship with something bigger than me. At the present moment I call her Goddess. I still struggle to believe and trust that I don't have to be in full control every minute of my life and that I can trust that I will be led to good things and so will the people I love. I've learned that life is so big and wonderous that I cannot even imagine certain things that come to be in my life. My mind was limited but if I could let go and trust, limits disappeared and amazing paths were revealed to me.

Recently my trust has been tested. I have been reminded that I've only scratched the surface of the goodness that is available to me with a trust in something bigger than me. I was ill, very ill, and unable to be in charge or control of much of anything. I made a decision on the first day of illness to give in to it. To trust that I could handle it. To trust that my body was made for this and let it work, without over burdening it. This meant that I had to rest. I had to let others care for me and care for themselves. During this time, I was reminded that people that I love face challenges too. I received news that people that I loved were struggling and having challenges, some exciting, some scary. I was reminded that if I could relax and rest and trust a Higher Power to lead me to health and wellness, that I could also relax and let go of my worry about others. They had something in charge of them too. All would work out without my intervention. I can still hope and dream, but most important is to trust.

It is not easy. I struggle, I forget, I fear, I fail. This week I shared my fear and struggle with someone I trust and they helped me to imagine myself sitting with my fears in one hand and my love and trust in another hand and just letting them be. Then imagining the most beautiful rain falling on me filled with unconditional love from something that was bigger, more powerful, and more loving than I could imagine. At first I was just going through the motions, doing what I was told, but then I felt this warmth wash over me. I cannot describe it, because I have never felt it before. It was a feeling I have no words for but hope to feel again often. I imagine it is the feeling that we had as newborns when all of our needs were met and we were being held in the most loving arms of our mothers. All is well. We can relax and be taken care of. Someone else is in charge and all is well.

So I don't have any answers. I'm not miraculously cured of my illness. The people I love are still struggling. What is gone is my frantic need to figure it all out, fix it all, and have the solutions. It is replaced by a trust, a knowing. Knowing that if I take good loving care of me, I'm doing all I can. That if I love my people well, there are no regrets ever. That if I don't see the answer now, it doesn't me there isn't one, and when it is time, it will be revealed to me. It's actually a huge relief to let go, not in the I give up way, but in the I trust You way. I always thought faith was something I had to work on, not an experience I could have anytime I allow it. The relationship with Goddess, I'm discovering, is perfect and there waiting for me, I just have to trust, let go, and experience it.

Cover Image Credit: Carie Terrill Photos