via: factsaboutyou.tumblr.com
It’s been a hardcore, intense past couple of days of growth and life lessons. After a long long time, I’ve owned up to a massive lie. I’ve confronted some pretty nasty patterns (of mine) and witnessed the searing pain that’s caused. It’s horrifying and humbling.
I’ve also experienced grace and felt what it’s like to stand in my truth and know while my actions deserve anger, I don’t deserve punishment. I’ve realized how cruelly I’ve tortured and jailed ‘me’. I’m deeply grateful for the people who’ve seen the worst and still love me – despite my many faults and foibles and frailties. I think I finally have an inkling of what Kahlil Gibran was saying when he spoke of Love in The Prophet. When I was younger I didn’t get what
“when love beckons to you follow him, though his ways are hard and steep… For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning… He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant… But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears…”
meant. Suffice to say, I do now.
I get that love demands hard work and discipline – taking responsibility for your sh*t and owning it. It’s tough to see ones own ugliness reflected back, to feel the culpability of having forced another carry your stuff. Love demands you see yourself – in utter brokenness - and show that which you are most ashamed of to someone else. There’s little option if you want to be loved in your entirety, to experience the depths of your heart… otherwise you’re always just skirting on skin. Love demands total surrender, being utterly vulnerable with The Other, wholly present with whatever comes up. And that takes balls – you’ve got to be bigger, more open and ‘there’ than your small constrictive fears and defenses would like to allow. It’s worth the risk…
