Through The Valley
Lent 2023 | Day 01 | Wednesday, February 22
Week No. 01
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it is for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within.
Amen.
Quote Of The Day
Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound. Release begins with acceptance. To heal, we embrace the dark. We walk through the shadow of the valley on our way to the light.
- Dr. Edith Eva Eger
Song Of The Day
Prompt Of The Day
Do you agree with Dr. Edith’s sentiments about healing? Many times, we’re taught (or at the very least, think we’re taught) that our scars must be covered up. That our embarrassments must be made over. That our stitches have to be removed or that our stretch-marks are too ugly to move forward with…
What might it look like to “befriend” your pain? Your fear? What might it be like to — rather than suppress or fight with — have a conversation with all that remains unsettled in you?
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I am reminded of a day in the fall of 2020. Frank and I were walking along the arroyo — the one that passes through the park by Drew’s old place, heading eastbound toward the foothills. Panicking. Panicking. Where was my peace? Where had the Presence gone? My magic bullet?
I called Michelle. She said, “Levi, befriend your fear.”
Ask it about itself. Give it a name. Call him Brad. No, don’t call him Brad — he’ll know you’re being an asshole. Be compassionate. Let him know you respect how strong his grip is. Ask him how it got that way. How he hangs from the tips of his fingers on the ridges of your mind — hold like a climber’s crimp on the Dawn Wall.
And before you spend another moment berating him for the tension headaches, apologize for lashing out when you didn’t understand how tired he was. Admit that you still don’t, but offer to hear him out when he talks about protection, and how much he loves you, and how much it hurts to be cursed for the only way he learned how to keep you safe.
Ask if he’s willing enough to trust you to look down. To show him the Floor. You’re standing now. And if he can’t bear to risk it, don’t force it. Tell him it’s okay. You’ll be back tomorrow to talk some more. Trust doesn’t happen overnight. But if you can be kind — if you can be kind — perhaps, over time, he’ll rise believing you’re safe enough to fall into.
Perhaps he’ll let you hold him. Perhaps. Perhaps. If it happens, stay in that embrace. There are landmines everywhere. When you trip on one of them, and your warmth fades and he lashes out like, “I KNEW you weren’t safe!” Apologize. Forgive. Which is to say: give yourself the gift of trusting you both care about one another enough to risk feeling the touch of Love again.
Laughter springs up from some well, eventually. Swim in it.
And when you trust one another enough, tell him about how you almost named him Brad.
