New Siren
Posted on | May 14, 2012 | No Comments
as written April 4, 2011
Continued from The Tunnels, Fluffy Pool of Pink, and An Invisible Net:
I have landed, somewhere. I sit up, on some strange beach that I have never been to before, but that feels familiar, somehow. I am laying in the Net that God has carried me in, and deposited me here with. My fingers absently trace over the thick heavenly rope as I look around me. A beach. The warm waves crashing lightly over my feet and legs. The sun, bright and warm – reaches to my bones. Big rocks around me and down the shore. It is beautiful, here. It is clear, lots of work has been done in this place.
Whose heart have I been taken to?
Clearly, I have been taken into someone else’s heart: beach: planet: world: inner-workings. I feel a slight panic as I realize this is not my own heart - I have trespassed! And my breath quickens in fear of being found out, seen. But as soon as I feel the fear, the words come:
You are wanted, here. You, are what has been waited for. You, are the gift that has been asked, prayed, sought, fought, and surrendered for. Trust me in this.
So, let me get this straight:…I have been spiritually and emotionally and intellectually brought to someone else’s heart before I’ve actually PHYSICALLY arrived there (met them/seen them/felt them?)????
I have been brought where God wants me without SEEING WHO THEY ARE, FIRST? That’s not the order of things! I am blind! I feel like my agency has been compromised! I did not choose THIS!!! I am not comfortable trekking across someone’s heart before I KNOW WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE!
I do not DO IT THIS WAY! It takes me a loooonngg time before I let people in, and here I am, traipsing on the sand of some man’s personal, intimate heartland beach!?!?!?!?!?!?
What happened to the trend of men jack-hammering down the door of my heart if they want access? This feels like…I’m too easy or something. I just…SHOW UP!?!?!?
Because I brought you here. Because you let me. Because it is my will – because it is what you deserve, what you have asked for, worked for, and surrendered for. Do not be afraid, for I am with you.
Despite God’s assurances, I immediately go to cover myself with the Net that brought me here, looking for the remnants of the Love I just left to shield me from anything new, strange, or out of my comfort zone.
But then I am reminded – I did not carry another man with me here. Neither did I carry the Love with me to protect me “just in case of” moments of fear and uncertainty. I left that all behind. So I cannot cower under some other Love when I find myself in a new place. “Damn it all to hell!” I spew as I realize this.
As I look, there is simply not even a tiny, caked-on piece of that light pink goo that I just left behind. Not one. I cannot hide, here. There is nothing to hide behind. Old Love works well at covering me, but when it’s just me? This heart, whomever’s heart I have just been deposited in, will feel me here. And they will come looking. And with nothing to hide behind…
he will find me.
But who is he? And just because God brought me here, does that mean I will even like him? Is this God choosing FOR me or God choosing what he knows I want because I’ve given my heart to Him? Augh I’m up in my head. I feel SO exposed here…knowing my big heart and soul are too potent to be invisible.
Some time, at some point soon – the owner of this heart will show up. Will appear on the horizon…and as much as I want to flee this place…I kind of want to wait until I see who it is, first.
The waves crash and fold under themselves, and I hear the beautiful siren ring out the warning: “She’s here! She’s here! Come find her before she runs away…”
A chair rises from the sand, and I look at it skeptically. It’s clear what I’m meant to do: I am not supposed to move. I am supposed to sit still. To do, once more, something I have never been good at doing. He better be able to run fast…is all I can think, in this anxiety-ridden moment…because so can I.
Throne Room
Posted on | May 13, 2012 | No Comments
as written April 3, 2011
This weekend has all been about pampering myself. Friday I cleaned my apartment, and Saturday morning I was up early – went to yoga. Then I went to Elase (student Spa) and got a pedicure with a bright coral spring color. Then, I drove up to the Sanctuary Spa where I spent 5 hours getting: (this Spa virgin dove head first).
A hydrotherapy body polish with Vichy shower (it’s as awesome as it sounds. My anxiety reared it’s head about being ‘touched!’ and I talked through it with Meesh, and was therefore able to enjoy it). Cut and color for my hair. And finally a manicure with light baby pink polish and perfected cuticles.
In between each service, I spent a lot of time just lounging and being still and breathing in their waiting room. The light was lowered, soft music played, and the ceiling was covered in dark, twinkling stars. I laid on the chaise, breathed, and got lost in the lights. The setup of the room was long and fairly narrow. And I sat at the far end in the middle – as you looked down the room, it ended with three raised chairs (with sinks below them for servers to kneel and wash their feet in perfumed waters and spices), with elephant sculptures on either side.
And the picture unfolded:
I saw a little girl’s feet patter as she ran down a marble hall. The perception rose so I saw where she was running – to 3 thrones at the end of a hall. Not THE great hall, more like a smaller, specific one…like…the hall for me. It was night, but the stars shone through the ceiling, and the light was a soft blue. No one else was in this hall…now I know because it is the hall for me. To come see my God’s. When the little girl got to the thrones, she launched herself into Heavenly Mother’s arms, and cuddled there. This sweet, still chubby 3 year-old me. Mother…sat in the center Throne. Abba sat on her left side, and the Savior on her right. I liked that. And then, I was following after her. The cold-looking marble somehow warm on my bare feet. But I was not alone as I approached them, past the tall pillars on either side. My Spirit was holding my left hand, and we were coming before them – together.
I could feel their love before I could raise my eyes to meet them. So much love this vessel cannot feel nearly more than an iota of it. As we stood before them, little me (who had since climbed into Abba’s lap), squirmed down and ran into my arms, where I picked her up with my right arm and held her against my hip (she feels comfortable with me, now. She will let me touch her.)
And that is the picture I see – my Spirit, my natural man holding hands, and me carrying the little child of myself. It is powerful, this Arriving. And they validate that. In the past, always, only one part of me or another has run here to them, but never, have we come before them as ONE. United, accepting, a unified front of all aspects of MONICA RAI (and all the other facets of my being that has a name). I felt the power of it, the purpose, the triumph…and they echoed it back to us.
But the reason (other than for me to realize we were now One) for my coming spilled over my shaking lips and I asked them – (from the email of my mother wanting me to stand on her rock again and just DO it already, and how she feels that me relying on HER testimony of going back to church is why she feels is her greatest purpose in being my mother at all) – if, she was right. If I was still not surrendering to it…if I need to force myself to go back to church. If I have to have it in order to progress…
And as the humbled, hurting, shy somewhat shameful announcement of my question emerged, from behind them opened these thick velvet blue curtains, and there expanded some infinitely HUGE vault; stocked from floor to ceiling and stretching back so far that even my heavenly eyes could not see the end: were every single sacrifice and surrender I have given over to God. I could see all the recognizable pieces of all I have given up and given back and handed over the Altar…I’d never seen them all together in the same place. I’d never seen the cumulative MASS of them, piled over one another. And it was not messy or haphazard, each surrender had its own space and place. Continual honoring (it means so much to them) always.
We stood there, remembering the losses, as our eyes took in the immense treasure trove of proof of how I have given my heart to God, and allowed the Savior inside it. Tears blurred my vision…but not so much that I couldn’t see Heavenly Mother gesture to her son, and say…
“You have Him, to progress.”
I have the source. The IT Himself. She was telling me I have the most important piece already. That He’ll guide me where I need to go, that my mother is not my God, is not them, and does not always know what is best for me. These are still HER issues in trying to find her purpose in being my mother, they are not my responsibility to fill so that she feels better about defining her purpose THROUGH me. I will never step foot upon her rock again, even if it would assuage her loneliness and desperation to find purpose and worth for herself.
“So, I’m not going to mess it up or miss it by not doing what she says I must?” I ask them.
They just smile at me with grins so huge it makes my little girl giggle uncontrollably. I can feel my shoulders relax and my jaw unclench, as I see them look at one another with the light-up-the-world-smiles, and cry again as I realize their happiness is directed at me, because of me, for me, as I stand in my personal Throne Room.
I am loved. I am enough as is. And all, is well.
Jen: Beautiful! It strikes me that this is also the kind of unity that man and wife can have, if they understand it and strive for it, realizing that together they are much more than they can be singly, and that it is because of their individual gifts and strengths that brings such power to this kind of union. One does not lose oneself in this type of a union. One gains a greater understand of onself, rather. Feels good to know that you are right where you are supposed to be…
An Invisible Net
Posted on | May 12, 2012 | No Comments
as written March 31, 2011
The last day and a half, some unseen (but very much felt) force has been lifting me slowly from the gooey pink pot of love I’ve been floating in. I wondered yesterday where this would take me, and I did not come to an end of it – I am being lifted out of it. From it.
To where? I don’t know. By what? God. I know His feeling, and this feels like him. But here’s what’s happening…
As I’m being slowly (slowly) lifted from the lovely light pink goop, the globs roll off of me and return to their ocean. Molecules of pink ball up like sand when it meets the rain, as gravity leans my limbs downward, and they collide into others and create bigger globs and then when they reach the edge of my skin – the tips of fingers, toes, hair, shoulders, elbows, heels, hips…they leave my body and fall back into the enormous sea of love below. At first, this didn’t bother me. I simply realized what was occurring, and that was all.
Deep inside, after a while, came the subtle but obvious urge to FEAR (used as an action verb). TO FEAR! Why were these lovely little globs leaving me? And if I didn’t save some, would they ALL leave? Would I be left with nothing? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I LOST THEM ALL!?!?!?
So I tried to collect them. Stuffing them in pockets and down my bra and in my mouth and cupped in my hands…I then thought of creating a net out of threads from my dress and hair from my head – which I planned on lassoing to my waist and collecting the droplets underneath me as I rose, so that I could carry them with me.
In my minds eye, however, as I made preparations to start sewing – was another picture of me in the exact same place, in a different colored ocean of love, for someone else. It was a darker pink, nearly red, and just as beautiful. I saw myself being lifted, and saw myself make this same net, and the more I refused to let fall back to its place, only served to weigh down the act of being lifted. I slowed…and as the bounty in my net grew, I slowed down more and more. Until eventually, I stopped moving at all. The force which was lifting me was allowing the unplanned baggage cease the pace at which I was heading to the next place.
I was allowed my agency. I was allowed my choice. It wasn’t that the Force which carried me wasn’t strong enough to carry us both, it was that I needed to learn that carrying things OUTSIDE of me did not serve me. And I needed to learn that that love was something that would always be carried INSIDE of me. He let me see the consequence of hoarding that which cannot be kept in such containers.
Clutching love and shoving it down my shirt and capturing it in a net is not Love. It is FEAR of losing love. I did not know, then, that I could not lose what I had already let live within me.
What I see, now – is that the net which gently lifts me from this place, that carries me to the next, is whose net it is to do such work. The Fisher of Men…has come to these waters and it is His only to whom I should let carry me, and the only one who actually can. But He is the fisher of men, not me. Even though, because I am His own, I KNOW how to sew nets…
But it is not my responsibility to do so. Even if it is no longer to carry a person, but to carry the Love around with me because I am afraid of forgetting, losing, and never having it again. I do know this lesson – and today, he reminds me of where I was, and what I have the choice to do again. And in that light…
knowing that no one else will ever be that color pink, and knowing that it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll never see him again or share love again -
I need to let it flow through me. Change me. And then leave me.
Love is a Living thing. She cannot be boxed up and carried like fish (who cannot live without their water). This Love cannot live in the Air. It needs to be flowing along within the ocean that exists because of it. And it will always be so. Always…
It will always exist, because we gave life to it. Within us, it came alive. Us, Creators in embryo. Such power lies within us to do such things. And within us, it will always live. But outside of me? It would dry in the merciless sun, cake like dry mud on my skin and flake away as lifeless and glory-less as the rotten corpse of a fish. Releasing love is the only thing that makes room for more.
It has changed me the way it was always meant to. Letting go is the only way to Honor its existence in the first place. Letting it drip down from the curve of my hips back to its sea is the only way I’ll ever look down and see the ocean in its entirety. When in it – I could see the wave upon which I floated. Grasping at tiny particles of it in my fists only lets me see the lack of it. Above…from here…I can see the entire body of Love, stretching from one corner of its globe to the other. Endless. Eternal. Moving, shifting, flowing. Beautiful. Alive.
And so – I look at the small threads and hair in my hand, shake them from my fingers (so prone to clutching), and stop struggling. I lay, limp within the perfection of His invisible Net, and I cry. I feel each sweet glob inch its way to the edge of my body, hang there for a moment, and then fall below – back to where it belongs. Where it will always be.
They move over my body faster now, sensing that I will let them go. But I can tell you the thousand trails they cross before they do, how they feel, how grateful I am for them, and how I still don’t want them to leave.
So today, I grieve. I grieve mostly, for what I cannot see. And the pace quickens, and the Net lifts…
and I am carried.
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