For When I Am Weak, I Am Made Strong to Be Precious and Free



Sometimes I feel very fragile inside. My soul feels like it’s made of the thinnest layers of glass. Inside a heavy sludge is pressing against its every angle. I feel the layers of my soul cracking as the sludge is propelled against them by the pounding of my heart. I feel the voices in the sludge welling-up into my consciousness: “I’m worthless shit,” “I’ll never make it in this life,” “No one really loves me and no one ever will,” “I’m destined to failure,” “I never should have been born.”

The pain of the past comes roaring back and I realize that I have many areas in my soul still left to heal. Awareness is my saving grace. I know I need to sit with my fragile feelings and allow them to simply be. They are valid and they need me to learn from them. They are the walking dead, mirrors of the past, and I must walk with them throughout my day in order to release them, free them and their horrors from my soul. This is how I reclaim my life from them.

I am intent on honoring these feelings, but I also must go about my day. I have places to go. I take a moment to find my copy of the soundtrack to the film “W.E.” The music Abel Korzeniowski composed for this movie is an absolute masterpiece, an orchestral pull and tug between the ecstasies and agonies of love. It hits on my every emotional nerve, takes me deep inside myself, allows me to feel and embrace my painful places and then takes me to a place of respite—a place where I find light and healing and hope. And so I place the soundtrack into my car CD player, allowing it to play over and over as I go on about my day aware of the fragility of my soul, but no longer possessed by it.

The music takes me deeper and as the sludge-filled feelings pull and tug inside me, I listen to the old, ugly thoughts that continue to fuel my painful feelings. I need to be aware of these life-draining lies. They are so ingrained in my brain and my heart. I need to hear them, challenge them and do my best to dismiss them for the lies that they are. We all have old ingrained lies zombie-dancing around inside of us; the lies that go back to infancy; the lies that tell us we don’t belong, we’re worthless, we’re unlovable. We need to bring them into conscious awareness so we can set them free and at the same time set our very souls free of them.

As the day continues, I stay aware of my fragile feelings. The more I walk with them, the less power they have. They begin to fade as I release my old negative thoughts into the afternoon air. And my mind turns to thoughts of comfort. There is comfort in the fading sunlight, in the coolness of the autumn breeze and in the life that is busy moving about me. I think of the people who have blessed my life with messages of love from their hearts and from our universal Higher Power.

No matter how difficult a day may be, we are always receiving comfort, often from unexpected places. Problem is that we aren’t always aware or grateful for the comfort that offers to caress it’s way around our wounds. Maybe we are just too busy about running away from the wounds, or maybe we are too stuck in being their victim. Sometimes it’s difficult to be grateful, or to look for the graces that the hand of comfort extends to us. But in every moment of every day, the Universe is offering us comfort from all that would destroy us. We have to be willing to accept it, to move forward and to reclaim our value and happiness from the lies that have for so long wounded our hearts and made our souls so fragile.

If you are feeling fragile inside, even if it is to the point of feeling hopeless, sit with your fragile feelings. Hug them, cry with them, simply be with them. Allow them to become prayers for help. Allow their voices to ring loudly into the consciousness of your Higher Power. Allow comfort to embrace you as you walk with the difficult feelings. They will teach you wonderful lessons in reclaiming your life, and as you release them, you will find you have new strength within “to be that which God intended, precious and free.”

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