Revealing Light

The post below took me awhile. I am uptight about going there. I am talking about God. The paralazing question of "What will people think?" has been screaming. The people who don't know me as a God girl (will they think I am a holy roller now?) and the people who do (will I sound holy enough?). Oy! Here's the deal. To tell my story I have to crack open and get to a new level of real. There was no getting around it. I'm going there.

I am a seeker. As far back as I can remember I sought out the “more” I felt I needed. Wanting to fill the lack in my gut with whatever was out there waiting for me. I suspected this was a God thing, even when I was kid, but what that meant was SO not clear. What I can say is that I always knew God. Meaning I knew He was there. I believed, with heart, that God was real. However, who He was to me and how He fit into my little life, was out of my reach.

I went to Catholic school as a kid. Pre-k through 8th grade. We had religion class almost daily for my entire school career at St. Barnabas. Yet, I realize now how little I was actually taking in. The bible stories I hear today sound somewhat familiar at best.

What I do remember were the rules. I wholeheartedly took in the idea of what was “right” and what was “wrong”. The wrong scared the living hell out of me. So, my daily life, from about 6 years old on, became a tunnel vision mission for what I believed to be “right”.

I longed for comfort, an exhale or for what I now recognize as rest. The constant striving for right and perfect left me tightly wound and tired.

I was blessed to find some of this comfort in my parents. In our home, I was safe. They loved me big.

They also got me. They, too, were trying to do “right”. In fact, I believe we come from a long line of do good-ers wanting to please.

My parents were just trying to navigate and internalize who they even were. For crying out loud, they were so young! Married at 19 and first baby, me, at 21. They still had major growing up to do as they raised my sisters and I.

This did not always lend itself to a smooth sailing, pintrest looking or free to be me household. That said, as a learning as I go kinda mom myself, I see the gifts in the messiness of it all. Vulnerability is a pretty beautiful approach to parenting.

As I got older and was trying to navigate who the heck I was, where I came from, and where I wanted to go, my tunnel vision for perfection narrowed. As life kept happening around me and I got old enough to recognize hurt and see the adults in my life as real people with real imperfections, the “more” I was looking for became something much less.

The God I knew became more and more of a fixed figure of reverence. My prayers only came out of desperation and always with the politeness of a good Catholic School girl.

Fast-forward a lot of years. Years of living. Years of seeking. Years of some really good stuff and years of some really hard stuff. Years of that perfection tunnel staying pretty darn dark. Years falling, rising, falling again, numbing, falling in love, breaking up, getting back together, finding success, hitting bottoms, cracking open, and finally……learning surrender.

My prayers changed. My seeking, not the same.

With surrender, I am no longer seeking the “more”.

In fact, I want less. Less distraction. Less perfection. Less filling up. Less waiting for the answers or for the next best thing.

I long to let go. I desire simple. I want only more of what has always been there. My quest is to grasp or hold close the life I already have with answers I was already so freely given.

That exhale, the rest.

The darkness came from covering up what was there all along. Now I am peeling off the layers to reveal the light.

All my seeking is leading me here, with God. This story I am telling here, the stories I hope to weave together, they are for and through Him.