December 24, 2009:  The Gift to Myself

I’ve begun to look forward to mornings knowing that I’m connecting with my Source, my Higher Power, the God within.  I’m amazed that my tears bring me home.

 As a child I was spiritually abused.  This was 1950’s Kansas with the “Preacher” yelling at us that we were all ugly worms, basically, and crawling ultimately and surely into the fires of hell.   I’m not kidding…one of the hymns has “for such a worm as I” in the song.  Only a small number of people went to heaven and even at 7 years old I definitely knew that I was not one of those people.  I hated being in church and I knew I was not going to heaven because I just wasn’t buying all of it and so my only option was hell.  I was terrified of dying.

 

One Sunday Mr. Preacher was vividly describing what it was like to literally burn alive.  He gave us a graphic blow by blow of the pain and what happens to your body and that this would go on for eternity.  Something frightened me and I remember yelling out in fear.  The congregation laughed but I just felt deep shame.

 And I was supposed to love this God who was surely damning me as I sat there because I knew I did not “believe”.  Loving God was an oxymoron for so many years.

 So now as I look forward to my morning connection with Source/God that is so immense and so loving that my human mind cannot grasp it, I fully know that God is love.  Any hell is our own disconnection with that love.

When my daughter was a toddler and in daycare I’d drop her off in the morning and she would cry when I left.  I knew that would not last long.   At the end of the day I so looked forward to picking her up.  But when I showed up for the loving reunion she ran away from me not wanting to go with me and sometimes becoming quite angry and teary when we finally got to the car.

I gained understanding about this from attachment theory in action.   For her to become close to me again, for her to be able to fully attach to me again, she had to go back through that doorway of pain through which she had left me.

I realize that my persistent morning tears now are the doorway back to my reunion with my Creative Source.  I feel it in my bones.  It’s a part of the homecoming.

 So, let the tears flow.  I’m Home.  What a great Christmas present to myself

 Peace and Blessings, Connie

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