"if I were to tell you my story..."

"if I were to tell you
my story, 
you would hear of hope, 
that wouldn't let go..."

The details aren't important -- what I have faced, how long it lasted, who were the perpetrators and the victims.  The real story is one of hope.  

I found Big Daddy Weave's song, "My Story", and played it over, and over again until it had circled in my heart - like a puppy "feathering" her nest.  Then it dropped into place and fell into a peaceful rest.  

I'd been sitting here - waiting.  I'd made a commitment to write daily.  Not to be read by others, or to be heard, but just because it is what gives me incredible joy.  It is my way of listening to God.  From short five-line poems to these longer essays, writing is my way of "taking dictation" from God.  

I will often wait - as long as it takes - for just one word to set off a spark.  I let silence breathe upon that small spark. My love for God's voice serving as the kindling that ignites into story.

Whether this process takes form in poetry, essay, the script for a "talk," or takes flight as a Christian Science treatment - this is what fills my heart with purpose and great joy.

Sometimes those one word sparks lead to a song, or a photograph.  Sometimes they just lead to the next word.  God takes my hand in His, and step-by-step I am walking through a forest of healing experiences, humbling moments of surrender, sweet memories of feeling God's presence -- and power. 

Today, the word was "story."  And it served as a reminder that we all have one - or many.  

Brene' Brown wrote, in the Preface of The Gifts of Imperfection, that:

"Owning our story and loving ourselves

through that process is the bravest thing 

that we will ever do." 

 I believe this with all my heart.  But I also believe that the only way that I can do this bravely, is by putting God as the main character in my story.  

When God is at the heart of my story, the rest is just context for what I am learning about Him/Her as the main character.  I am not alarmed when Kate is afraid or filled with doubt.  I know that this story is really about what God, the main character is going to do. 

I love this lyric from Big Daddy Weave's, "My Story:" 

"And if I were to 

tell you my story, 

you would hear Love

that never gave up..." 

This Love is not personal or emotional.  I can tell you, without shame, that my personal sense of love has often felt like giving up or giving in.  But this Love -- the kind that never gives up -- is spiritual.  Paul assures us, in Romans, that: 

"neither death, nor life, nor angels, 

nor principalities, nor powers, 

nor things present, nor things to come. 

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other 

creature, shall be able to separate us

from the love [that is] of God..." 

This is the Love that all of our stories are about.  The Love that none can take away.  The Love that is our rebellion against all that would say that we are vulnerable to a false narrative.  The Love that -- when named and claimed as the Source of our brave willingness to step into the places where we are filled with uncertainty -- empowers us with unfathomable humility and grace.  This is the Love that never leaves us alone.  Consciously tapping into the core of Love's presence in our hearts, is a constant reminder of this fact. 

So, today -- this is my story.  A story of Love.  Every day, I will write this story.  The details will be there as context - not content.  "Ahh, they will say -- look what Love has done in this field." Fallow, fertile, fearful -- it is not about the field, but the Farmer.   

I offer today's dictation with Love, 

kate

"write, hard and clear..."

"Don't cry out loud,
just keep it inside,
and learn how to hide
your feelings..."

Melissa Manchester's "Don't Cry Out Loud," was a theme song in my early twenties. Put on a smile, never let them know you were hurting, don't admit your mistakes or failures. How did that go?

It didn't work. By the time I was in my late twenties, I was bottoming out. I had a moderately successful career in education -- but that was about it. My relationships were in shambles -- all except for the ones where I held the purse strings and felt some sense of control. My body was falling apart, and I felt scattered all over the philosophical map -- a spiritual homelessness that I pretended didn't bother me. Sometimes it takes something as minute as a pinprick to burst the bubble of denial. Mine seemed like a slow leak.

Recently I came across a quote that served as a reminder that my journey back from the facade of self-certain control about my "story," came in a series of small moments. Ernest Hemingway once advised:

"Write hard and clear
about what hurts."  

That statement scared me. The things that hurt were ugly. I felt exposed and broken whenever I even thought about them -- how would I ever be able to write them down? And yet, I knew writing was one of my great loves. But I also knew that if I was ever to be able to write with conviction, I would one day have to find a way to write about the darkness -- in order that it might give context to the light.

After coming back into a working relationship with God - through the study and practice of Christian Science - I felt that there was so much that I was grateful for -- and I had to write about it. My life was transforming, my heart was healing, and my hopes were soaring. I wanted that to be my only story.  

But everything I wrote felt pale to me. It was all daystar. A healing of self-worth almost disappeared without the contextual backdrop of decades filled with self-destructive behavior. To the most distant star, is the night ever too dark? I thought it was. I wanted a new setting. I longed for the beautiful, good, and true to be the only page on which my life-story was written.

The problem with that was, that it just wasn't true. 

 So, now to the purpose of this post, which is ultimately the purpose of this blog.  Here it is.  I needed to say to anyone who felt that their story was too ugly to acknowledge or own, "you are not alone."  You see, I had felt so alone for so many years. I couldn't imagine that any spiritually-inspired person -- engaged in a healing ministry -- could have a story as dark as mine. It made me feel like an imposter.

That was, until I met a woman who wasn't afraid of her truth. In fact, she used the darkness of her childhood as a platform for the brightness of the lamp that God had lit in her heart.

She reminded me that Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The spiritual sense of truth
must be gained,
before Truth can be understood."  

Note the capitalization of the word "truth." The lower case truth denotes the actuality of our human experience. The upper case Truth points to the fact that God is All-in-all. That there is no moment, situation, experience or memory that is without God's presence, power, and love. To deny my life as ugly and dismissible, was to deny that God was All-in-all. I needed to own those stories, not as human mistakes or failures, but as a divine adventure in which I could find the face of God in the most tragic moments.

I remember one very specific memory that haunted me for decades. I was being serially threatened by someone I should have been able to trust to care for me. It left me feeling like a small animal that didn't deserve to be treated humanely. But reclaiming that moment for God and recasting the story as an opportunity to find the face of God in the midst of darkness, I began to see that right there, right in those moments of terror and humiliation, I was aware that what was happening was wrong. I was clear and sure that what I was experiencing was not the way that a child should be treated.

It took me five decades to write that story. I wrote it hard and clear. I wrote it honestly and I wrote it with God - and not a frightened child or an evil grown-up - as the main character. I was able to write with complete honesty about my hurt, without having it hurt me any longer. If fact, that story elicited hundreds of notes, calls, and comments from men and women who had faced similar life-narratives. 

I found that when I write about what is hard, it suddenly becomes clear that God was always there, always with me, always giving me the courage, wisdom, strength to navigate each experience.

Elsewhere in his vast archive of advice on writing Hemingway states:

"All you have to do
is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know."

 
The truest sentence I know is always the one that has God as it's subject, love as its verb -- and me - as the one who has experienced the presence and power of that love - as its object. I can only write a true sentence from my own experience -- and hope it reminds others that they are not alone.

This is the reason I write, this is the reason I pick up the phone, this is the reason I do everything I do -- to let someone know that they are not along in the darkness -- or a pale insignificant star in the harsh light of their day.

Today, I cry out loud, and I listen quietly. I am grateful to have learned to write hard and clear about what hurts -- so that it is defanged and doesn't hurt anymore. Mary Baker Eddy writes:

"Think of this, dear reader,
for it will lift the sackcloth
from your eyes, and you will behold
the soft-winged dove descending upon you.

The very circumstance, which your suffering
sense deems wrathful and afflictive,
Love can make an angel entertained unawares.

Then thought gently whispers:
“Come hither! Arise from your false
consciousness into the true sense of Love,
and behold the Lamb’s wife, — Love
wedded to its own spiritual idea.”

." 
May you feel this wedded bliss with your one true Love - the main character in every story.    


offered with Love,

Kate

"the story is His..."

"You are the Sun, shining down on everyone.
Light of the world, giving light to everything I see.
Beauty so brilliant, I can hardly take it in...
and everywhere You are is warmth and light.

And I am the moon with no light of my own.
Still You have made me to shine.
And as I glow in this cold dark night,
I know I can't be a light,
unless I turn my face to You..."

You probably thought I'd exhausted my Sara Groves' store of song favorites...not even close.  "You are the Sun," from her Add to the Beauty CD is a great song for dancing into spiritual realignment. 

Tonight, I've been thinking about "my story"...or in my case, "my stories."  And after a few days in which my theme has been, as Mary Baker Eddy suggests, to:

"Examine yourself,
and learn what is the affection and purpose of the heart,
for in this way only can you learn what you honestly are."

I feel sobered by what I have learned.  And, about how easy it has been for me to let my focus stray from writing His story, to writing all about me. "Kate, Kate, Kate..."  My life, my thoughts, my hurts, my dreams.  When I think about it, it all starts to sound like the teacher on the Charlie Brown specials, "blah-blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah..." 

I am shocked at how often I have, unwittingly, cast myself as the main character in so many stories.  Sometimes the victim, and other times the villain, then, occasionally, the hero lurking in between the lines, but I can't deny that I have been front and center...way too often.   Silly, silly Kate.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.... What the heck is she doing there as the center of her own universe?  Hmmm. Oh well, that's what egos do. Thank goodness we aren't our egos!!

So if we aren't supposed to be the main character in our stories, what role should we, could we, would we play if we put God front and center as the one, and only, "Person" our story revolves around? 

And so now, after a good long walk in the wilderness with myself, I have some clarity.  And the more I think about it, the roles I would like to see myself cast in -- more consistently -- from here on out, are as: the audience, the observer, the witness, the narrator...bit players, extras.  I may end up on the stage, now and again, with a few lines...and an occasional pratfall...but I pledge to let God be the only Star taking the bow at the end of the story. 

This is the affection and purpose of my heart.  Toso dissolve the ego (especially mine!) that God, and only God, is revealed as the main character, the All, in-all of us.  His is the story of the kingdom of heaven within our hearts.  And when God is at the center, the core, of our lives...the story is always His.   And our lines are simple, "Thy will be done."

He is the Sun...everything in my world revolves around Him.

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit:  Nathaniel Wilder  2010]