It amazes me how I keep having to learn the same lessons over and over and over again. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever grow into an interior space where harsh words spoken by a loved one don’t wreck my inner peace within the short span of a few insensitively muttered syllables. This not infrequent experience of my over-sensitivity, it is all so humbling.

After an attempt at a nice family dinner outing last night to a fabulously hip local restaurant that serves up delicious Mexican food, I left the table at the end of our meal feeling deeply wounded. In fact I woke up today feeling as if I am bleeding from my heart and I don’t know how to make it stop. Truth be told, I really hate suffering and I am stumbling about to discern where it is I can find a bandage to cover this gushing laceration.

While I position one hand on my heart to try and control the flow, with the other hand I am searching for a weapon I can use to inflict pain in return to my daughter. And then those true, but annoying and inconvenient words of one of my favorite wisdom speakers, Fr. Richard Rohr, pop into my head: “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” AND “The natural movement of the small self or ego is to protect itself so as not to be hurt again.” AND “If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably give up on life and humanity.” Ugh. I hate when my ego is confronted and backed into a corner. I drop both hands and cry out for help.

I know I’ve been here before. I know I’ve written about this before. I know, because every time I encounter a new trigger, it seems as if I am back to square one in the school of the spiritual life. I search my mind and ask myself, what is it I am supposed to remember? What have I learned when in this place before? My mind draws a blank; it’s still too busy seething with anger at my perceived state of victimization. Quickly I search my past blog posts to try to find the lessons imparted to me before when I was stuck in this exact kind of mess. I find many on this same topic, each with a slightly different presentation, but then I see this one from two years ago:

Mary reminded me of her heart; though pierced by a sword, it was able to burn bright with the fire of love. It could hold the pain and the love together without rejecting the other. Her heart, she reminded me, was broken over and over throughout her journey as a mother. Yet it was precisely in the breaking that its capacity to overflow with divine love and grace grew with each new fissure. Recalling the traditional religious image of the Immaculate Heart, which before had no positive effect on me, it seemed as if she was extending it to me. For the first time, I saw its softness, its warmth, its healing grace overflowing to hold, comfort and heal me. I begged her to ask her Son to give me the strength in this moment to bear the pain and love together in the small space of my broken heart. Slowly, a peace came over me, the temptation to retaliate lost its power and I could breathe through the agony, just as I did when I was in labor with this same child.“

https://eyeswideopentothesacred.com/2017/03/26/she-who-once-was-distant-has-now-drawn-near/

As I read it over again, it all starts coming back into my consciousness. The lessons: Bear the pain and love together, without rejecting the other; it is precisely in the breaking of the heart that its capacity to overflow with love and grace grows with each new fissure; in asking for divine help, I will be given the strength to breathe through the agony.

One of my plans for Lent was to show up with intentional Love and presence to the least of these I encounter. It has always seemed to me so much easier to be loving to the those I encounter who identify for me their exact need. If you tell me what you need I can respond accordingly. You are hungry? Can I buy you a sandwich and some chips for lunch? You are dying of cancer? When can I stop by and visit you? You had a rough day? Do you want to sit in my chair and vent about it? Being loving to my own flesh and blood who lashes out at me from the depths of some need that I don’t understand and may never even be informed about—that is tough as nails and I don’t like it.

We aren’t even a week in and what I imagined my Lent was going to look like is NOT LIKE THIS. Yet it is obvious to me that here, in this place of pain, resides yet another lesson I have to learn over and over and over again. Forget YOUR plans for Lent; God has re-imagined your plans and though they may not look like you want, they will be exactly what you need IF you but yield your will and ego to the One who knows best.

It is now clear to me this journey is not supposed to be about any neat and packaged responses to the least of these I encounter outside my home. Rather it must be about navigating difficult and rocky terrain that requires laborious inner work. It will be about choosing to hold love and pain together in the space of a small and broken heart. It will be about death to the ego in order that new life may be resurrected within me. It will be about offering a compassionate embrace to those who can be the most difficult disrupters of my ego and my ways and most likely at the most inconvenient and unexpected moments.

May I be given the grace to buckle in and embrace the glorious messiness prepared for me in these remaining days ahead so that I may arrive to my final destination of Easter not “perfected” by my plans, but made new by surrendering to His.