"it's holding tight, and letting go..."

"it's holding tight,
and letting go;
it's flying high,
and laying low..."

Clint Black's 1997 hit  "Something That We Do,"  is something of an anthem for me. So much of the success stories we hear - in regard to love, are about holding on. But there was a time in my life when I really needed to hear that love was also about letting go

As a family steeped in adoption, this was a theme in our lives.  The bittersweet paradox of love. For us to be able to be a family, a birth mother -- or birthparents -- had to let go. And yet, I believed that through the path of open adoption -- the ongoing relationship between birth families and adoptive families -- letting go could also include holding on. I still do.

But when it came to marriage, for me it was all about holding on. Holding on for dear life. And this holding on was not always gentle. Sometimes it was frantic and desperate. In fact, it was often like that for me. I would not be a quitter. And I wouldn't let anyone else quit either.

But I have learned that sometimes love is letting go. After decades of refusing to "give up," one day God asked me, "do you love him enough to let him go?" It had never occurred to me that loving someone could mean not trying harder. But as I let that question sink in, I thought about how much I loved my daughters and what loving them had looked like - from the moment they came into our family.  And it was more about letting go, than holding on.

It started with letting go of my dreams of how I would become a mother.  Then it was sharing them with others: placing them in the arms of family and friends who loved them, trusting a babysitter, leaving them in the Children's Room during church services.  Before we knew it, we were dropping them off at pre-school, sports events, sleepovers, camp, international service projects, expeditions, college...

Letting go wasn't about giving up with our daughters, and it wasn't about giving up on my marriage. It was about loving enough to trust God's tender, constant, unfolding care for each of us. I can only speak for myself, but for me, it was about surrendering self-will and pride for spiritual growth and humility. It was about holding on to my highest sense of living love, while letting go of what I thought it should look like.

For those who think that this is some version of self-justification, I can assure you that it is not. I have spent countless nights rehearsing that day -- when after years of trying harder and praying more -- God broke through my self-certainty, with piercing clarity, and asked me to love enough, to let go.

It was not the first time God had spoken to me in this way -- so it wasn't a foreign language. Some years earlier, when my husband and I were in the process of adopting our first child -- a son -- his birthmother was prayerfully led to reconsider her decision to surrender. Our adoption agency had made it clear that since he was already in our home, we could contest her change of heart.

But that was the thing -- it was all about hearts. The night before she was to give us all her final decision, I was sitting alone praying about what to do.  And out-of-the-blue God asked me, "Some day that baby will be a boy of twelve. Will you be able to say to him, "your mother wanted to raise you, but we fought to keep you."

My heart surrendered in a moment. And as painfully hard as it was, I never regretted that surrender. Years later, the Voice, and the feeling, were the same -- and I knew. I felt it pierce all the disappointment and pride. All the human will and hardness. I knew it had nothing to do with not loving him -- but loving him more.

Mary Baker Eddy has this to say in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn life in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, "Canst thou by searching find out God?"

For me it read, "Then we begin to learn love in divine Science. Each time I have been asked to let go, my understanding of Love has expanded beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  I have learned more about love, and my relationship to God -- the Source of all love -- by the weaning, more than by the holding on.

And in truth, we never really let go of what we love - only of our sense of personal attachment and possession. We are not the arbiters of love in our lives -- of its presence in our hearts. We love, who and what we love by divine appointment. We can't control that. But we can let God define how we relate to one another, moment-by-moment.

Love is a verb. Nothing can keep us from being love. Nothing can deprive us of our right to love.  It is the one real power we have. Think of it.  No one can stop you from loving them -- from being conscious of, seeing, and calling attention to the best in them. Every relationship in our lives is the ebb and  flow of holding on to what is true about another -- and letting go of what isn't.

Whether it is in the day-to-day surrender of our children to teachers and friendships, or the letting go of what we think define us, and how we live, love, and work together. We are never separated from those we love. We hold them forever in our hearts - as tenderly remembered experiences, through co-parenting, and in our genuine hopes for their future joy in loving -- and perhaps, loving someone new. In this way, there really is no separation, only the surrender of outlines and attachments.

Letting go in love is not a failure. It is just another way of loving someone. Every moment of loving is a remarkable moment of success over self. In this, there is no failed love. Time doesn't validate love. Loving validates love.

I love these lyrics from "Something That We Do":

"We help to make each other
all that we can be.

Though we can find
our strength and inspiration
independently.

The way we work together
is what sets our love apart."

Life is eternal. There will be an infinite number of loves in our lives. May each one bring you nearer to God - the Source of all love. May you know the eternity of loving without possession or attachment. May you feel the power of love as an active, unstoppable, irresistible verb. May you know the love that is both holding tight, and letting go.


offered with Love,

Kate

[photo by Katariina Agnes Fagering - used with permission]

"i'm barely breathing…"

"I'm falling apart,
I'm barely breathing,
with a broken heart,
that's still beating..."

I can't hear Lifehouse's "Broken," without remembering.

It's been almost two decades now, but the moment is seared on my fingertips. The pattern of the damask on the love seat where I was sitting that day burned into my flesh. The light coming through the mullioned panes in the bay window. The fragrance of steam rising from the teacup poised at my lips.

This was the setting for my "crisis of faith."  You see, if there was one thing I'd been sure of -- my entire childhood -- it was that I would do anything for my family. I would allow myself to be shattered into a million pieces, if it would hold us all together. And I was convinced, that I had done, just that. I was sure that, because I had put my love for my family before everything else, I was heeding the voice of an overarching universal Love.  For in this place of loving them most,  I felt detached from the suffering, the sadness, the loneliness of it all.

But that day, almost 30 years after the suffering had subsided, I heard words I never imagined, "you know, I really never felt that I loved you as a child…"

How could that be. How could I have sacrificed everything for someone who could blithely admit that I'd never been loved -- much less, appreciated for all I'd gone through. I felt betrayed. Not by this person who was so oblivious to the fissure she'd set off in the fragile shell of my heart, but by God.

How could God have let me suffer so persistently, when the one I was devoted to helping, didn't even love me. It was more than I could bear. I felt as if I could actually feel the small cracks inside tear through my being. I wondered if I would survive the moment without going insane. Madness insinuated itself at every turn. The fight I'd waged against disassociation for most of my life, was taking me down for the count.  It seemed likely that this battle was on the verge of ending -- with me in a straightjacket.

For so many years, I'd survived by holding on to the promise that God loved me, and that even if I couldn't understand the reason for my circumstances, I could cling to the hope that the love that I had for my family was more than enough evidence of God's presence in my life, to keep me safe and sane.

The days that followed this careless moment of confession were surreal. I wandered through my days in a haze of "just keep it together, Kate. Don't let anyone know you are losing your mind. You have children, you have a career, you have responsibilities. You can do this, you did it as a girl, you can do it now." But I couldn't. As a girl, I'd had God. I'd held on to the promise of spiritual purpose. Without God, I had nothing.

As the madness descended, I disappeared. I hid in my work, I escaped into a closet where darkness was a friend and the voices that hissed, "you were never loved…" were somewhat drowned out by the sound of silence. I wept for the death of hope. I mourned the loss of my one truth -- I'd been loved, it had all been for a divine purpose.

One of our neighbors was a grief counselor, and although I didn't feel comfortable pouring out my whole miserable life story to her, I found myself wandering over for tea -- often. I needed to know that someone out there cared about those of us who felt bereft and completely lost in sadness.

I listened intently as she talked about the books she was reading, the exercises she used to help her clients heal, the messages that made a difference. But nothing was finding its way through the sharp cracks in my heart, and reaching the soft flesh of my pain.

Then one day, while sitting in my dark little closet under the eaves -- and yes, it really was a closet. I felt something begin to rustle in my heart. It was like the light I was hoping would reach in through the cracks from without, was pouring out through them from within. There was a warm feeling of love, a soft light, radiating outward. It burnished the edges of each fissure and caused them to glow like fire-touched shards of ancient pottery.

All the hope I had for being healed by a system, a person, a message of comfort was obscured by the power of this inner surety -- I had been loved by God. A clear knowing that I was, in those moments of crucifixion, the very love of God being shown to my family -- regardless of what they thought, saw, or felt about me.

The fissures in my heart became the windows of my soul. I was not hiding in the dark, waiting for the light of day to stave off the madness, I was the light. I was not the shattered shell.  I was the inner light -- the divine magna -- bursting forth from within.

My crisis of faith was over. I knew that nothing could ever -- again -- deprive me of who I was. I was not the object of love. I was not a child hoping, waiting, praying to be loved. I was the very love of Love. This had always been my purpose, my identity, my life -- all along.

I had not let go.  I had held on long enough. I had not lost my faith in God. I had found a new sense of who I was in relation to God. My love for God and my trust in His love for me, was never going to be a guarantee that I would feel loved by others.  Nor would it justify the sacrifices made. My love for God and his love for me was enough. It was, in fact, everything. It always had been, and now, it always would be.

Every time I read this statement from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, I smile. I had long thought that if God loved me, I would find a place where there were no disappointments or woes. But I have since discovered that this is exactly where my most profound spiritual discoveries actually have their beginnings:

"Our disappointments
and ceaseless woes,
turn us like tired children
to the arms of divine Love,
then we begin to learn life
in divine Science."
 

My "crisis of faith" was not an interruption of my love for God, my faith in His omnipotent goodness, or my trust in his care. It was actually the beginning of a higher and deeper understanding of how invulnerable my relationship to Love, and my purpose as Love's reflection, is.

I remember, some years ago -- after having this experience -- hearing of Mother Teresa's crisis of faith.  I understood.  It is possible to love God supremely, to give your life to His service and the care of his children, and still be shattered by the suffering in the world - your own or that of others.  But it is this breaking open of the heart, that allows compassion to pour out with with greater understanding.

And I -- for one -- am grateful for every opportunity to draw closer to Him.

offered with Love and profound gratitude,
Kate

"You will miss these days…"

"suddenly,
there's a shadow
hanging over me…"
- Lennon/McCartney

"There will come a time, when you will miss these days," he said with a sigh. I was sure he was either as mad-as-a-hatter, or worse yet, just-plain-mean, for saying this to me.

When I think of that conversation, and my mentor's sigh, it's not so much the lyrics from Lennon and McCartney's, "Yesterday," that come to mind, but its tone that rings true.

I'd called my friend because my life was falling apart. Everything -- my marriage, my career, my body, my dreams -- were all coming loose at the seams and I couldn't hold it together. I was afraid and empty.  And the only thing that took away that feeling of total panic and hopelessness, was a book: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

I'm not saying that everything between the book's covers made sense to me, just that reading it seemed to lift the fog that engulfed every other moment.  I was tired, I'd been very ill, and I was feeling more alone than I'd ever felt in my life. I didn't have a job, and I didn't know how to navigate this landscape -- at all.

I needed to be useful, so I begged a friend to let me volunteer in her department.  Those hours spent in service to others, kept me from going mad. I sat at a desk outside her office, answered her phone, did odd office jobs, and read from the copy of Science and Health that I kept in the top right drawer  - laying open on top of pens, pencils, paper clips, and rubber bands.

It helped, but I wanted more than relief. I was hungry for healing. I was aching to find peace from the pain. I was starving for the Truth that would make it all go away -- the sorrow, the confusion, the emptiness.

All the truths I'd thought I understood -- about being a good human -- had just dissolved before my eyes. I couldn't believe that I had studied scripture, prayed daily, served my church faithfully, and was still facing such a "dark night of the soul."

But I was. And my friend was right. There would come a time when I would miss those days. There would come a day -- in the not too distant further -- when I would miss the raw ache of wanting a deeper spiritual understanding, in the midst of human delusion. And there have been days, since then, when I have yearned for the kind of "on my knees, begging for spiritual nourishment"  moments which I so sorely felt in those weeks and months of spiritual hunger. But there have also been days when I wondered why I missed them so. 

They still come, but today, I know enough to not be so afraid when I am facing the darkness. I have discovered that these are "the best of times," in what my human sense of things calls, "the worst of times." 

And I understand my mentor's sigh now. I think back to how every word of Scripture felt like a drop of water on my cracked and thirsty heart. I tear-up with gratitude for having walked that path, and for having found the waymarks left along the way by Biblical (and contemporary) spiritual travelers who must have known that others -- like me -- would follow, and need their encouragement to keep going.

And I did find a new view of things. It's funny, recently someone told me that I never remember to say, "and the healing came…" I am often remiss in acknowledging that there was a shift in my experience because I get so caught up in the stark beauty of the spiritual journey.  But there was a shift -- many shifts.

And I am so very grateful. There were so many fingerposts along the way. Small messages of encouragement that kept my head above water, and saved me from drowning in despair.

For example, I remember the first time I read this Beatitude, from Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," in the book of Matthew with new eyes:

"Blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness:
for they
shall be filled." 

To realize that the primary blessing was in the hungering and thirsting. And that the "being filled," was almost an after thought -- "oh yes, and they shall be filled." This gave me such a sense of peace.

And then there was that moment when I read this note of encouragement from Eddy's Science and Health:

"Our disappointments
and ceaseless woes
turn us like tired children
to the arms of divine Love,
then we begin
to learn life in divine Science.” 

and realized that facing disappointments and ceaseless woes wasn't the end of my spiritual journey -- the equivalent of a rejection button on my failed prayers. But that these moments were actually the beginning of learning something new about life in divine Science -- now that was a big sigh moment.

Today, having faced many moments of disappointment and woe -- my own, or another's -- I've come to accept and embrace them with less fear, and more grace. They can still shake me, but they can't touch what I know to be true: that these are not days of failure, but days filled with spiritual hunger.  And these are the days that I will miss. Because these are often the days when the light of Truth is most clearly seen in the context of human disappointment and woe.

I've also discovered that I have it in me to really love this hunger. I know that I want these experiences that lead me deeper and deeper into the fields of the Lord -- gleaning every fallen seed.  So now, it is me that is sighing - with a sweet, sober sense of expectation and love.  I sigh, because I know, that when my world seems to be falling apart, I am just beginning a new journey.

offered with Love,

Kate