After winter’s cold weather, these sunny, warmer days are truly mood-boosting. I am fortunate enough to have my massage therapist work just two blocks away, so walking to and fro this morning was an experience of sheer delight. Listening to the birds, noticing the maples in bloom and taking in other signs of an awakening earth filled me with such joy, reminding me that if I stay in tune with Mother Earth, myself, and the people around me, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. We have been brainwashed into thinking that things make us happy, but it’s being at peace with ourselves and the God within that opens us to a bubbling over joy and sense of inner contentment.
I know I’ve been on a kick about being too attached to things, but the older I get, the more I realize that sense of well-being I longed for when younger can’t be bought or sold. I began experiencing joy as I came to terms with my strengths and weaknesses, my sunny self and my shadow self. It is critically important that we come to embrace our shadow or broken self for it is only as we can acknowledge that part of us that we can experience God’s grace and love. When we are strong and in control, we don’t need God or meaningful relationships. We are full of ourselves. Our egos are in control.
I was fortunate to grow up in a loving family and a loving church community, but even so I never felt I quite measured up. I tried so hard to be a good little Christian girl, but deep down, I knew that I could never be good enough. Our family struggles with addictions literally broke me.. Thank God! There were days when it was all I could do to get out of bed, but I had a family to take care of and a church to pastor. I felt like a complete failure, and when I went to our church council and tried to resign, I had one of my deepest experiences in unconditional love, for instead of accepting my resignation, they gave me a challenge. “You are not a failure because you are dealing with disappointment, heartbreak, and failure. All of us are struggling. We have absolute faith that you can lead us out of darkness into light.” That’s when I joined a 12-step group and learned about letting go and powerlessness and how that helps us find joy in the little moments and tiny successes.
We don’t need much to be happy, but we do need each other and a caring, forgiving God. We need to be open to change, to learn from our mistakes and failures for they are the greatest gifts life has to offer us. We learn little when we already know how to do something, but when life’s a struggle, when we fall down and get up, even if bruised and battered, we learn so much about ourselves and the God within and the God without.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to increase our conscious contact with the God of our understanding, praying only for God’s will for our lives and the courage to carry that out.