You ought to be ashamed

These words thrust themselves like fists at the pit of my stomache. Shame. Fear. You'll never be enough. There seems to be this voice in me continually saying, "hard as you try, there will always be that one thing in you that is never good enough, will never measure up." As beautiful, as professional, as wonderful as you try to appear, there is something innate. And we aren't going to be able to get over it.

I'm afraid. intellectually, I know all of these are dirty little eyes (lies?), but down there, deep in the center of my stomache, they tie knots. SHAME. Why did you come? I imagine them asking. What made you think that you would be worth it to us? I tired to make it work, I did my best. I thought if I could clean up my mess, it would be okay. But things are falling apart and I must appeal to someone else now. Someone who is saying, "I'm sorry, but..." Appearing to be someone else doesn't matter because the rot is deep, underneath it all. And I am afraid. I'm tired of disappointment and rejection, tired of agonizing over decisions I don't want to make. I don't know what else to do. Why can't it all be over now?

People have said to me often, "Heidi, you don't seem to enjoy the process much." The answer is, "yeah, you are right." I don't like the process. I want to be through his. "What is there to learn?" I don't feel much like thinking about that right now. I'm ready to be done and I'll learn the lesson later.

But today I am anticipating and dreading phone calls. Yes or no. Further commitment. I'll have to decide. And I fear saying the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing, being the wrong thing... after all. demanding too much. What if I let someone down? What if I'm a disappointment. I see the hand raised above my shuddering shoulders, the booming voice. "HOW DARE YOU THINK SUCH A THING." My stomache is knots again.

And this other voice says
TRUST
TRUST
TRUST.

trust me. Child. Trust me. Can you trust that I know all these things? Don't you know that I do not condemn or fault you? I don't really understand why not. But nevertheless, the voice keeps saying
TRUST
TRUST
TRUST.

trust. I've been thinking a lot about breathing. About how life is less about trying to be something else nor is it about attaining some other reality and it is more about seeking what is. Gazing into the eyes of the trees and the rushing water and seeing how life really is. Seeking not escape, but plunging deep into the bowels of everyday life and reality to find myself in it. Breathing instead of holding your breath. And I think trust is something like that. Just breathing, allowing the air to enter my lungs and then leave. Trust is taking in the air that I have been given for this moment and trusting there will be air again for the next and the next and the next and the next. Trusting.

It is hard to breathe (trust?) when your stomache is in knots and you are looking back to last week and the week before and the week before. The sting of the disappointment still hot. The remembrance of the ways I have not measured up still fresh. It is your fault. The system that says you must pay for your own mistakes. Clean up your own mess. There's the bed, sleep in it.

And yet, someone once said, "Grace pays the bill." Grace pays the bill. Why? How? What if it doesn't? Can't I still control it, make sure that it does? Apparently not. I don't get to manipulate control or conjure. All I can do is breathe and trust. Drink and swallow. Listen instead of frantically run about hoping that by chance I'll stop running into trees and find the opening. Abba, WHERE IS THE OPeNInG?