Sometimes
the lessons of life come easily – sometimes that is not the case.
But always, it seems they come with great poignancy – a profound
sense that had I not been given this experience my life would have been
poorer for it.
My friend Rob fell in love. She was a married woman going through one
of those marital rough spots and she turned to him for solace. He fell
hard – hook, line and sinker – truly, madly, deeply. He
exercised no restraint, no “common sense”. He’d been
looking for love for a long time and here it was sniffling on his shoulder.
He was a gonner.
For months they danced the dance – come here, go away, come back,
better not.
He spent hours on the phone with me. “Why is she doing this?”
he asked. “Does she think she can just use me to make herself
feel better? Doesn’t she know how I feel?”
Rob, like too many of us has a lot of personal insecurities. He can
give you an endless list – too short, too husky, thinning hair,
unimpressive job. What would a woman see in him? When I mention his
warmth, honesty, his easy humor and broad shoulders he shrugs it off?
He is not prepared to see himself as worthy.
Finally he gave her the ultimatum – make up your mind. She left
and he was broken-hearted.
A year went by before they met again. “It was incredible,”
he told me amazed. “I had it all wrong. I thought she was just
using me. Now she says she was torn apart – she wanted to be with
me but she couldn’t break up her marriage or hurt her kids.”
He sighed. “I respect her so much for telling me that –
it just never occurred to me that she loved me.”
It never occurred to him that she could fall in love with a beautiful,
kind, generous man like him? What a painful thought. And what a familiar
one.
I wonder how many of us could tell a story like Rob’s. We are
besotted by this longing - this desire for connection. Passion is our
nature. Yet our own inability to see ourselves as worthy and desirable
acts like a filter turning dark our perception of what we most long
for. Searching for our passion we are like emotional gypsies –
wild and beautiful but restless and wary – ever wandering in our
search for a heart to call home. The yearning keeps us wandering but
our aching inability to see our worth keeps us from trusting and surrendering
to our heart’s desire.
I understand Rob too well. So many times I’ve wanted to believe
that I was valued but my personal catalog of failures and shortcomings
kept me bound in insecurity and distrust. How can I open my heart when
I am fully occupied with counting all my warts and wrinkles? Where is
there room in a life full of problems for a surrender to bliss?
Sometimes the greatest pain holds the key to the greatest growth. When
we are the most deeply wounded it may be because in that moment we are
the closest to our essence – to the thing that holds us in its
power. What if we knew that when the pain is most acute we are facing
a great truth – it is only our fear that blinds us to it? It is
the intensity that holds the key! If we feel acutely our passion is
close by.
I have a lot of trouble holding still. My first instinct is to run.
Protective measures, I’m sure, formulated long ago when my heart
feared one more wound. But being watchful has two possibilities –
we have a choice of what we focus our attention on. There comes a time
when we have to trust our beauty as well as the wildness of our spirit.
There comes a time when we have to start looking for signs of love and
acceptance instead of evidence of rejection and disappointment.
Maybe it is time to stop enumerating disappointments and shortcomings
and sit quietly in the empty space where our failings used to be and
feed the inner fire that burns away the darkness inside.
This is my story: I met this beautiful man and I didn’t fall in
love.
I’d fallen many times before but this time I didn’t. This
time love slowly grew. It is hard to let go of a lifetime of defenses.
I pulled all my old useless tricks – wrapping myself up in whirlwinds
of activity to prove how full my life was without rendering myself vulnerable
to the potential pain of love.
But every time I stopped my wild dance there he was - looking at me
with his gentle eyes. One day I saw the love in them and I stopped trying
to prove that I didn’t really need it. I surrendered and came
home.
My nature is passionate – I’ll always be a gypsy in my soul.
But my heart is beginning to believe it has found a respite from wandering.
In his eyes I see my worth – it was always there. I never stopped
to look before.
