It was at my alma mater, and she called me mid-week to say, "Hi, I'm here at your old school. Remembering when I first came your freshman year. It makes me so happy to be here, remembering how proud my heart was that you were coming here. I'm eating at the cafeteria and we're meeting in your old dorm."
Awww.
I was in a stressed out tizzy today, like I have been for much of this week and last. Except today it was particularly bad. I was laying in bed and the word "catatonic" came to mind. I did centering prayer for an unknown amount of time, prayed a lot, and basically asked God to please relieve the fucking stress. I was willing to surrender all and everything to get rid of the stress. I didn't say fucking then. But it feels nice to say it now.
I wandered into my mom's room and sat down in the chair. And then I opened my mouth and said, mom, I am really stressed out. I told her why and she sat listening to me with a soft smile. She didn't say much.
And in the end, when I was all done and looking at her with "help me" eyes, she looked at me and said, "Don't worry so much. Just keep going on."
Exhale.
Wow. Just keep going on? That did it folks. That's all I needed to hear. Sometimes, you just need someone you love and trust to not freak out that you are freaking out and tell you not to worry. Tell you keep going on and don't stop living. I realized how much I had let stress keep me from going on.
I had become obsessed with knowing if what I was doing was right or wrong and that is always the first step into a living hell.
When I stop living in grace, stop accepting myself, stop being present in the body, and start trying to figure out if I am right or wrong from my head, my life quickly becomes crap. I had some serious moments there where I thought that my anxiety meant that I was out of favor with God. Protestant theology dies hard, it really dies hard.
Richard Rohr says in A Hope Against Darkness, "In the moments of insecurity and crisis, shoulds and oughts don't really help, they just increase the shame, guilt, pressure and likelihood of backsliding. It's the deep yeses that carry you through. It's that deeper something you are strongly for that allows you to wait it out. It's someone you absolutely believe in and your will is committed to. In plain language, love wins out over guilt any day." (69)
He also says, "Once the dualistic mind takes over, the ego is back into a 'pick, choose and decide' game, which is the beginning of exclusionary, punishing and even violent religion. Remember, anthropologically religion begins with the making of a distinction between the pure and the impure. Jesus consistently ignores such a distinction." (70)
Here's to all of us suffering from the anxieties of our small heads: Don't worry so much. Keep going on. You will find life.
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