running to stand still

a difficult weekend of hard conversation and decisions has passed and proved not to be fatal. just tiring.

as i took a disrupted journey back to Belfast last night against the backdrop of horror created by the murders in Antrim of Saturday night, i talked with a woman who feared the loss of the peace and freedom she has felt these past few years. her words echoed those that seem to be on everyone's lips, let's hope this is not a return to the old days.
against the political outside i felt the contrasting feeling i wrestle with everyday on the emotional inside, that i don't want things to stay the same. i too want to leave the past behind, but i don't want the way things have been to stay the same. i have felt so little peace or freedom.

i've always imagined liminal spaces as kind of empty but in this transition how can lost feel this full of feeling? and i am reminded of words as i prepared to leave the safety of therapeutic retreat last fall, that the place between the old life and the new might be the very place where we find G-D.

taking some small steps this week to start building the new life, which is going to be different and probably hard for some time to come in its own way. but i guess there's only one direction you can go from this place of bottoming out. all i hope for now is an uneasy peace someplace else that might grow into a real lasting inner peace in the future.

or perhaps i hope that one day i will look back and find i had courage that i do not feel right now, in changing what i can. acceptance, where i now i only feel resignation and disappointment

this season has been full of acts i'm told are strength but all too often feel like failure. moments when i have to forego narcissism for the acceptance of only being human and not responsible for anyone but me. learning that what feels like a desire for reconciliation is sometimes one's weakness in disguise. just one of several ways of being i am trying to relearn. to reframe what one's idea of trust is, what makes for compassion. one of the struggles of this liminal space is finding that what i think G-D would want of me and what i must do for my own wellbeing are not necessarily the same thing... but maybe i have misunderstood the divine intention... just as i have misunderstood love.

i feel angry at G-D on days like these. because i wish these lessons weren't so damn hard to swallow. but maybe their pain means they're important. i just wish He'd found other vessels to teach me with. but then i guess one can't be hurt by people you don't care about. which is probably as true as saying we most hurt those we care about. and without the hurt i'd not be learning the lessons i need...

LB