Good morning…
I am repeating this image from yesterday’s post because I love it so. It captures my experience. In overwhelming moments, it is so very “me.” Much like the Cousin Itt character in the 1964 The Addams Family TV series, sometimes I feel like my wild-haired emotions cover my entire body, especially hiding my eyes, rendering me unable to see truth clearly. When asked what is underneath all the hair, in one episode Cousin Itt simply replies: “Roots.” When I have “Cousin Itt moments” of emotional overload, I need to get alone with God, to journal with God down to the truth at my roots.
My emotional roots were uncovered on Friday morning as I read aloud in class these life-giving words.
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Excerpt from Paula D’Arcy’s Seeking God With All My Heart
During one of life’s lonely stretches, I remember thinking that my distress could be lifted only if there were arms to hold me and someone to speak words of love to my heart. The desire grew until it became a deep longing. Then one night I stepped back, for some reason, and happened to observe that longing in whose grip I now felt lost. I noticed that it had captured my thoughts and feelings, seducing me. I saw how that longing worked its way into my psyche, gaining access to my being through a belief that I lacked something, a conclusion that fullness was missing and must be found, a feeling that I was not already free. Because of those convictions, a vulnerability had grown, and taken hold.
Yet from somewhere else deep within, I suddenly understood that if I could observe those feelings and that vulnerability, then I was separate from them. I was the one watching. And my watching presence lacked nothing. Something said to me, don’t align yourself with those emotions, nor struggle to get free of them. Instead, become present. Simply observe.
I considered that with one sweep of my observer’s hand, an inner hand, I might be able to move fear and longing away. I tried it. And another reality emerged that knew something altogether different than what I’d been feeling. It knew that I was in fact already loved, and already free. Nothing was missing.
“You long for more?” a larger reality seemed to ask. “Then picture it. See it being realized. You have full power to imagine all that your life can be, and full power to step into that reality.”
…If we were not restricted by the ego’s limited sight, if we knew within us a greater nature, whose sight is truly unlimited, then what would be possible? Perhaps the greatest purpose of a lifetime is to regain this greater sight, to become aware of it, and to know ourselves in a very different way, recognizing every circumstance, both great and small, as nothing more or less than an opportunity to fall into a freedom that is already there. (40-42)
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God’s enemy loves to pull a whole head of wild-haired emotions over our eyes, tangling up our feelings, thoughts, and longings, seducing us into sensing “I am lost. I am lonely. I am lacking.” When we are present to these feelings and simply observe them with God (and for me with my journal), we get to the very root of the truth.
As we sweep away our “Cousin Itt-ness” with our inner hand, a new reality emerges right before our eyes. We are already loved. We are already free. Nothing is missing. We have the Holy Spirit in our heart, the same powerful Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Staring down the enemy who is seeking to destroy our souls, we calmly conclude: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20, NIV).
…Sue…
