Off Again On Again

I many have been absent from here for almost a year.  Few external changes many internal changes.  Dogs are fine, cats are fine HB(HoneyBunny) is fine.   Mountain valley is full of snow. 


I am maturing.  About damn time some (me) would say.  I have been pondering my mental, spiritual and emotional age against my chronological age.  Very confusing, and humbling. 


This all started when a favorite nephew commented I hadn't changed in twenty years.  I was flattered and accepted the comment as a compliment.  But...was it?  Yes Nephew loves me and intended it to be a compliment, and, it unseated me.  Am I still as dumb as I was at 38?  Or 28?  Or, God forbid 18?  Sort of. Why?????


I do not learn from my sorrows, and they are legion, so I remain in a holding pattern.  This pattern is common to many baby boomers.  We have not had to intimately face war, famine, disease and death.  So we don't grow up.  Suffering grows you up.  But to suffer you have to lean into the pain.  This I have steadfastly refused to do.  I avoid feeling pain at all costs.  I obsess it away with whatever is to hand. I don't enter into suffering and my maturity is retarded.


If we let it agony strips away all of us and leaves God.  (This is the purpose of pain).  Not the rescuer God who will protect me from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but the I AM of Job and the Passion of Christ.  So...to grow up in Grace I am learning to feel my pain.  I am trying to not eat my way out of it, to not watch my way out of it, to not work my way out of it, to not read my way out of it, to not procrastinate my way out of it.  I stop what I am doing and lean into it as it washes over me.  Very frightening.  Surprise, surprise, God gives me the grace of courage to endure.  So I do.  Pain comes in waves.  It is not constant.  I didn't know that.  Way less scary to endure if you know you will have help and it will come to and end.  Until it comes again.


Take care, love Bea