Big exhale.
I wonder if you could use a big exhale at this moment right now.
I’m taking a little bit of a risk with this video today, because there’s a lot going on — in my household, in my heart, in my nervous system.
My husband and I are struggling with our oldest son and the transition to seventh grade, and the struggle just continues. It ramps up, it quiets down, and the resolution is not yet in sight. That’s a really difficult place to be.
And yet I wonder how many of us are in similar situations, where there is uncertainty about how things are going to play out.
I wanted to record today because I’ve made a commitment to myself to record on Wednesdays, and a commitment to myself to honor all the moments of life as sacred, as holy, as containing the divine life — not just the high moments, when the choir is in tune and the preacher is sharing a great word. Not just a peak moment of bliss or ecstasy, but even these really challenging moments of uncertainty and fear and anger and confusion and being at odds in relationship.
So I’m risking recording this video right in the midst of that confusion and uncertainty, with the intention of sitting with the moment and considering what it might contain of truth and love and goodness, usefulness, possibility.
And when I sit still, as I started with, all I want is a big exhale. I think there’s meaning in that exhale, because what this moment feels like it is calling for is release. Elimination.
So much of the stress of this moment in our family life seems to be caused by this swirl of commitments and expectations and demands and requirements, all at the same time — almost a crushing load of them, which is often how I perceive the material world. It’s the email to answer and the laundry to do and the meal to prepare, the kid to get off to school and the kid to pick up from school and the soccer game to attend — just an unending number of choices to make.
Just yesterday I had quite a little meltdown of my own, after listening to my children argue about where to eat, and then settle on a decision to go to one restaurant that was next to another restaurant, where one person wanted something and someone else wanted something from the other place, and they were content to have this — I don’t know — a compromise, which to me just felt totally overwhelming. I’m someone who struggles to figure out what I want at onerestaurant, and now you’re introducing me to two restaurants I have to choose from. I ended up just sitting in the midst of it, not eating anything, because my stomach was so tied up in knots.
And I’m coming to recognize that as I mature, as I continue to integrate my own experience of oneness that is rising in me as the truth of my being — this experience of love, this experience of oneness, this experience of the truth of things — as I integrate that more and more into my heart and my life, much of what happens is that I’m unable to make sense of this crazy life that we live with all of its crazy expectations.
And so, facing this moment with my son — now refusing, or really feeling himself unable, to cross the threshold into school — is his experience any different from mine? Is he also overwhelmed and overloaded by this modern life? And is the limit he is reaching part of the journey we’re on together as a family, to find a way through — a way through all of this insanity that actually leads to well-being, that actually leads to love and to truth?
And to real usefulness — not the usefulness of accomplishment and performance and getting along and proving, but the usefulness of being nurtured, being seen, being cultivated to become who we truly are. And growing in our ability to be present to ourselves. My growing in my ability to be present to myself, my son growing in his ability to be present to himself, and then somehow finding a way to be present to each other, in ways that are alive and good and whole.
It would be much easier if he would just attend school. I want community for him, and support, and I certainly don’t want him to hide away forever. And this is what is happening now.
I wonder what things are happening now in your life that perhaps you feel infuriated by, or overwhelmed by, or terrified by. And how much of you is resisting — wishing they weren’t happening, wanting them to stop or improve or change quickly, fast, so that you can get over this challenging moment, through it, beyond it, past it.
And what it might feel like for you to make the difficult choice to be present to it. To accept what is happening right now — that it is what is happening right now. And that perhaps in the midst of it, there is something really true and really good seeking to be experienced and expressed. Showing up in a really inconvenient way, because that’s the way for change to occur.
All of this is so much at the heart, the foundation, of what I call Be Love, Be Honest, Be Useful. And it’s very much at the heart of what I perceive happening in so many circles. So many of us are trying to rush past the problems at hand. So many church societies are trying to ignore, and jump ahead to growth and change and transformation and all the goodness we want, right? To skip over what’s on the ground right now. What’s really happening, and where is there real suffering and challenge that we are skirting around and trying desperately to ignore, because it’s so uncomfortable.
And what would it be instead to really sit with it? Show up to it. Show up to each other, and to ourselves, in the experience of what really is right now — even in all of the discomfort.
I appreciate having this opportunity to record this message, so that I can sit with all the discomfort in my own experience right now. And I hope that somehow me making this space here makes possible space in other little pockets of life, for others of you who might take the time to listen.
And I pray that we together can find more ways to show up to exactly what is, with one another, with a sacred intention — in ways that help us, ways that help each other not to get over the challenges, not to get past them or to disassociate from them, but to alchemize them. To show up to them so fully that they begin to change and transform right in our midst.
I had the opportunity last night to speak with someone — to do my first Be Love podcast interview of the fall. I didn’t hit record, for whatever reason — another mishap along my journey — but we had the most fulfilling conversation. Part of it was hearing from him his deep faith in divine providence. He was sharing with me his wish that he could touch someone and transmit his faith in providence to them, because it’s so vital to us — being able to really be present to life, to believe in this flow of providence, to believe that there is something moving, and to trust the moments we are in, that that’s where the providence flows.
And I’ll tell you — as he was speaking, he transmitted that to me. I too, of course, have faith in providence; that’s at the heart of my ministry. And I’m a human being, and when faced with incredible challenges and struggles, like I’m in right now with my son, it’s hard to trust that I’m doing it enough — that this moment that feels impossible actually will lead to another moment where possibility will unfold.
I was filled with gratitude for him and for that connection, and it encouraged me, and reminded me again of why I do what I do, and why I want to make the space that I want to make, and why I’m sitting here right now sharing the truth of what’s unfolding for me at the moment. Because this is life. This is the sacred human life that I’ve been given, and that you’ve been given, and that we’ve been given. And it is hard right now.
I don’t know that I know anyone who is thriving at the moment. We’re all walking through really difficult waters, with a lot of uncertainty about where we’re headed.
And... it is good. It is sacred. And I continue to believe that it’s finding that core sacred center of life, and then showing up with each other from those cores, that’s going to help us walk through what we’re walking through right now — create something new that will actually support our common thriving.
I don’t think my son’s struggles are isolated, and that he’s the only one. I think there are so many children who are struggling right now, and adults and elders too. So many of us feel out of place in this world we’ve created, that seems to almost be the antithesis of what we really need.
So it’s a tricky time to be a human. And yet, here we are. And what might we be able to make possible together, as we navigate this difficult time? How might we be able to find and create new bonds of love and connection that can nurture us, that can awaken us, that can encourage us and help us remember who we really are when we forget?
I feel those bonds starting to form. I experienced it last night. I’ve experienced it with so many of you who have stepped into this work. What might those next steps be — to bring us closer together, closer to ourselves, closer to our children, and closer to God?
I pray you are finding those steps, taking those steps, and trusting in those steps — this moment into the next.
All right. Many blessings, friends.
Please note that because of our current family challenges our Monday Morning 7:30 am BE Love Devotion Meeting is delayed until the first Monday in October. Stay tuned!
