Settling 31-10-12

31 October 2012

I bumped into a young lady yesterday, an acquaintance who I have chatted to very intermittently over the past few years. It was supposed to be in passing as we were both rushing, but it ended up as twenty minute session. You see, she is one of those always busy, always rushing, always on a mission ladies; but a couple of months ago she landed herself in crutches, through the carelessness of someone else, and the healing is taking a very long time; so she is understandably frustrated and irritated, and her reactions to people have been in line with what she is experiencing. The catch comes in because she is a devout Christian… the catch being that, in her experience, ‘Christians’ are put up on a pedestal and people expect them to be perfect all time and never to moan, or complain or have their lives turned upside down. In fact, she has that perception of ‘being a Christian’ too. I sat listening, flabbergasted. She told me of how nasty the injury had made her, how frustrated she was, and how she could feel herself turning cynical and depressed at the multitude of added pressure because she wasn’t functioning ‘normally’, but was dependent on everyone else for so many things, when she was used to being dependent on herself… she said she felt like God was judging her and telling her that she wasn’t ‘being a proper Christian’… she said that she was looking around her and that everyone else’s lives seemed so perfect and that they had such control; yet here she was feeling like she had dropped to the bottom of the emotional maturity scale. She felt helpless, hopeless and exhausted and the tears began to run despite this amazing woman trying to stop them… I listened, in awe…I’m a faith-filled person and my life has never been in a bigger mess before, but I’m cool with that, because everyone needs to suffer in life, it’s how we learn: through failure and suffering. Life would be absolutely mundane and fall-asleep-like-a-zombie dull if it was easy! What would be the point?

These perceptions from such an intelligent high achiever? I couldn’t believe it. How had her belief in herself and Our Father become so distorted? The absolute, basic truth of being God’s child is that: He loves you. Period. Absolutely NOTHING you can do can make Him love you more, and absolutely NOTHING you can do can make Him love you less. There is no judgement from Him. He has forgiven EVERYTHING, by His Grace. Why can’t humans believe that? Why do they have to take judgement into their own hands and make up nonsense about being imperfect? She is a person who needs to be in control of everything, and now that the balls have fallen and she can’t control everything, which is perfectly normal, she feels like she is falling apart and everyone is judging her… it was so obvious to me that the only being judging her was herself. She was adding to the pressure of her life by thinking that it is possible to get everything right, when it is not. You can’t please everyone all the time and you are blooming lucky if you can please one person some of the time!

It’s like mathematics when you are learning to do sums and they tell you that can’t add an x to a y, because ones an apple and the others a pear… every human being is a different fruit (some more of the cakey version than others ;) we can’t compare ourselves. No one has been born to the same parents, in the same place, at identical times and dates. No one. No one can see inside anyone else’s mind, no one can be anyone but themselves… so why, when it is a fact we can’t be compared, are the people around me continually comparing themselves to others, and judging themselves on non-factual premises, when there are no criteria for judging anyone, except for the nonsense we make up in our own brains? Why can’t people accept themselves for the beautiful, evolving, growing and learning selves that they are?

They can’t admit they are judging themselves, so they say other people are judging them, or they say that God, who has already told us over and over again that we are loved and forgiven, is judging them. Where does all this nonsense come from? People lash out at each other because they are scared and insecure. People lash out and judge, because it makes them feel more comfortable with the fact that they themselves feel flawed and imperfect. Those who shout the loudest, in my experience, are often the ones who are hurting the most. This whole façade of ‘everyone else has a perfect life’ is such rubbish; serious rubbish. In fact, I can’t even recall ever having a conversation with anyone who had a ‘perfect life’, but then I’m not afraid to say that my life is far from perfect and my being is far from fully mature. I learn new things every single day. I’m open to the learning; I’m open to changing my perspectives, nothing in this world in permanent. Nothing in this world is beyond improvement, and nothing in this world should be judged, because it has all been created flawed and deserves to be helped and loved because it’s a deep need that we all have, and, ironically, everyone in the world is able to help and love in some way; simply by being human, you don’t need money, or a degree, or anything, only ears to listen and arms to hug or words to uplift. Everyone has the innate ability to love, unconditionally, and it makes me so sad that our parents, friends, teachers, siblings, fellow human beings are not teaching and showing each other how to unleash and express that love in a healthy, open, sharing, caring, beautiful, honest and giving way. We have these souls that are yearning for truth, yearning for acceptance, yearning to soar in magnificence… yet, we stand in our own way, we stop ourselves, we prevent our wholeness because we are judging ourselves, because we are scared of our awesomeness… over and over again God tells us ‘FEAR NOT’, but we don’t listen to that either…

I couldn’t take away her pain or frustration, but I did tell her to stop judging herself and to be patient with herself. I suggested she cry if she needed to cry, laugh if she needed to laugh, scream if she needed to scream and to just be… ‘Life’s gift to us is just to be’… and I reminded her that when her heart is in the right place, when her motives are to be the best she could be with what she has, then everything is really happening in the exact perfect timing … you can’t know happy until you know sad, you can’t know joy, until you know sorrow, you can’t know peace, until you know frustration… the human experience covers all parts of the spectrum of life, to know real love, comes after knowing true loneliness…