90 Day No Negativity Challenge – Day 51

Wrestling With Angels

It happens, usually when I am least expecting it and feel the least prepared.  I’ve done it often enough in my life to trust the process and let myself be guided through it.  There is a blessing if I can stay the course.  The day before yesterday and the one before that were demanding, but yesterday just flat wore me out.  Wore me out and wore me down to the point that I wanted to quit this, just give up. No one would blame me, people would understand.  With that, I cried.  I’m not talking a few tears. I’m talking tears from my soul washing away the dust on my heart.

My reaction was, “What the hell. I don’t want to do this. I just want to have fun.”  That is often as not my reaction.   I always do what is being asked of me by my soul but really, I mostly would rather have fun.  And this does not come under the heading of fun in my book.  I’m sorry, say what you want, but this is many things and fun isn’t one of them.  Thank you Revlon for water proof mascara because it would appear that I’m not done wrestling with angels or crying. I’m okay with that because I know that tears from the soul are different from other kinds of tears.

Tears have magical properties in fairy tales. Clarissa Pinkila Estes, Ph.D  in Women Who Run With the Wolves wrote, “Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.”  I cried through the night and let myself be carried away, helpless, but consenting.  I was really hoping against hope that I would wake up with a burst of clarity and understanding….didn’t happen. This morning I cried some more.

Bob called and said, “I called for a reason, what’s going on?”   I didn’t know what to say other than, “I’m wrestling with my angels.”  The willingness to engage in this process, the struggle with the unknown is, for me, an act of faith.  It is an acknowledgement that part of my identity cannot be drawn from outside my soul and cannot be known. It is giving my self over to my soul and its season.

I almost know what it’s about, the need to be significant.  The need to be significant has created negativity at work. That much I got and that I would write about it. That it provoked a struggle caught me off guard. Maybe that was the point.Why that particular issue provoked this struggle is probably less important than the struggle and where it will lead me.

Bob was wisdom. He made sure I was eating well, eating the right thing and drinking plenty of good water.  We had a whole discussion of what constituted good water and why. He offered to take me paddling, offered his company then told me to go to it.   Off I go, pass the Kleenex please.