“When the Heart Waits”

(Written in January 2008)
I’m tired and discouraged and completely confused about what to do next. Maybe instead of trying to figure it out I could just wait for some guidance from outside, or a clear impulse from inside.
Reading “When the Heart Waits” by Sue Monk Kidd for support in this process. The last time I read it I had a hard time with it. I was stuck and angry, still feeling the old ‘push, push, push!’ Now that has faded. I’m tired & discouraged, but I also have a sense of being back at the beginning, all the old patterns smashed and swept away. I don’t have any energy to start some new project, or get back to some old one. I’m WILLING to wait, in a way it’s a RELIEF to wait, a relief to feel that this is REALLY OK, that God has called me to just sit still for a while.
From the image of the daffodils, buried too deep but still growing up to flower: “— those delicate shoots breaking through the soil, through all the darkness I’d heaped on them. I wondered if that was the same mystery going on in the soil of my own life. Was there a truer, more whole self buried in me under layers of heaped darkness?” p46
“There’s a bulb of truth that’s buried in the human soul that’s ‘only God’.” p47
“To Hildegarde, sin was failing to care for the soul, failing to water it and give it what she called “greening power.” … “The soul [is] the seedbed of divine life within us … The soul is the place where we meet God.” p48
“We’ve neglected the unfolding of the God-image within [the soul] … “The soul wants to be acknowledged and nurtured.” p49
She talks about naming the false selves, naming “the inner patterns that imprison us.” p59. One that pops out for me is the overachiever: still trying to prove that I deserve to live, I have to do more than I can do naturally. The “Tinsel Star” — “I just stand there and shine.” “The Star’s task is to discover her own inner light, the divine spark, so that she doesn’t constantly struggle to create light and warmth for herself by giving a lustrous performance.” p62 Another one is “I have to do it all myself.”
She talks about two levels of surrender: one is the work to let go of the things we know are holding us back — conscious, willed effort. The second is complete letting go of effort, allowing God to do the deep restructuring. “Having done all we can, we allow God to work directly on the more secret and deeply ingrained attachments we have to self. We allow God to release us through the experiences, encounters, and events that come to us.” p107 (Author’s italics)

This entry was posted in Depression, Healing, Interesting link, Spirit. Bookmark the permalink.