"and when I don't belong..."

"and when
I don't belong,
you say
I am Yours..."

Lauren Daigle's "You Say," was the fire that drew me to her side this morning -- as the first snow of the season, fell gently on the last of summer's roses.

Some days I wake up without a sense of belonging in the world. Not just in big abstract ways, but in the details of the day. I look in the refrigerator for something to eat and nothing seems right -- and not just "not right," but foreign. I walk out the front door and I feel detached from the community I have loved and cherished for decades. I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

I have to yield a sense of who I am based on context -- the where I live, who I know, what I do version of my self-- to something invisible and indivisible in me. This lyric from Lauren's song really spoke to me this morning:

“The only thing that matters now
is everything You think of me..."
 

It doesn't feel disorienting or disassociating when I yield to this one "thought of me," but I actually feel more connected, more fully engaged, more at peace with my place in the world. I am able to sit for hours and hours in my office and feel the presence of a community so inclusive and universal that all those feelings of "not belonging" drop away.

As I was pondering this line her song:

“You say I am loved,
when I can't feel a thing..."
 

I realized that it does not feel at all personal for me. How often do we pray that our children, friends, colleagues, neighbors, strangers on the border, or soldiers and refugees in a far away land can actually feel that they are loved -- truly, viscerally loved, deeply held, completely protected and defended.

How many times have I felt empty and bereft of love in my own life? Too often. But no matter how loudly it feels like that emptiness is echoing in the cavity of my longing, it is not true. And I can know it is not true. In fact, I can actually prove that it is not true.

For example: I, myself, am filled with love.  Even though it may not feel that it is coming at me, or towards me -- from someone else at that particular moment -- but it is always radiating from within me. My love for my daughters, my love for beauty, my love for honesty, goodness, innocence. These are always there -- ready to be called up as a reminder that I am not "without love" in my life.  This is consciousness of the presence of Love, is the I AM of divine Being.

Mary Baker Eddy gives us such clear direction in our search for identity, belonging, an invariable sense of who we are in the world -- and how we fit -- when she wrote:

“How shall we reach
our true selves?

Through Love."
 

What God -- divine Love -- says about me, or you, is all that matters. Everything else that might be said about us is lovely -- or not. Whether those voices are from others, or just the false voices that hiss in the night.  Either way, they don't matter.  They can just as easily bring us joy and comfort one minutes -- and the next, drive us to our knees with the weight of insecurity and self-doubt. They are fickle and unreliable sources.

But we are not limited by those voices of admiration -- or dismissal.  We each have the right to ask ourselves, where is this "message" of grandeur or smallness, belonging or emptiness, success or failure, love or fear -- coming from. If God isn't saying it to us -- we can question it.  We can decide to sit with those feelings a little longer, and let them instruct us in compassion, or we can listen more deeply until we hear the voice of divine Love reminding us:

“you are not alone,

what I say about you
is all that matters,
and you are Mine..."
 

It is enough to lift us up, to dissolve our fears, to humble our ambitions, to walk us forward...

offered with Love,

Kate

"to be the new girl..."

“to be the new girl...”

This beautiful piece of music by Paul Collier is called,  "Alone in a Crowded Room" . There are no lyrics to reference as an epigraph.  But the emotions it evokes speak as deeply as all the right words.

I was the new girl. Always the new girl. Year after year -- the new girl. The girl who never eats lunch but lives in the library. The girl who is never without a journal and pen, so that she has someone to "talk" to. Is it a wonder that when the "devil" wants to make me feel insignificant and small, it will insinuate those feelings upon moments of self-discovery, and opportunities to be made new.

Silly devil, I am on to you -- and your tricks. I have reclaimed being "the new girl," for divine Love. Yes, I am the new girl, but I am not afraid and alone anymore. I am no longer the waif sitting in the cafeteria with my nose buried in a book -- well maybe sometimes -- but now, I am there with that book because I am learning something new about myself and the world around me. I am writing in a journal because I am discovering that the world, and the people in it, are notable.

Today, I want to be the new girl. And as uncomfortable as I know it will make me, as many difficult memories as it will trigger in me -- I embrace it. I belong here.  There is a promise here, and I am going to experience it.

To be new, is not to be afraid and alone, small and over-looked -- it is to be given the opportunity to walk away from past stories and into the light of a new version of your timeless self. And because that new girl is not yet known, it often feels like I am watching her from a safe distance. I observe her steeling herself with the courage of knowing who she is at her very core. I hear her praying in the midst of a hundred voices humming like a beehive. I watch her step away, just long enough to remember her worth.  I love her.  I love her willingness to show up in that space.

A song from our hymnal says that:

"New occasions teach new duties..."

I now welcome new occasions. They not only teach me new duties, but refresh ones that I have long-loved. I love the moment that comes just as I enter a "new space," I am the new girl, filled with fresh hope, a quiet wonder, and the certain sense that God is Love -- everywhere I go.

So, if you are in a crowded room, and you are the new girl -- embrace it. Let it truly make you new.

And if you are in a crowded room, and you are quietly observant enough to notice the new girl -- make eye contact, ask her a question, smile in passing -- you may have just discovered a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

And when she returns from her maiden flight, she will light on you.

offered with Love,

Kate