How long halt ye between two options?

Today is a good day to blog. I am a bit burned out from many weeks of intense work and outside nature is just as burned out as I am. The wildfires of Canada have saturated the air with a thick layer of smoke and a state alert has been issued to urge everyone to stay indoor for the next few days.

The past two weeks have been unusual for me. My daughter was out of town with her dad for summer vacation and I had a lot of time in my hands. Time to work, time to cook, time to clean, but also time to sit down and reflect. Time to slow down and think.

Being without her is harder than I thought.

I often ask myself what it will be like when she will move out, not because I am looking forward to it, neither because I am afraid of it. Mostly because I know it is something that eventually will happen and I still don’t know how I will actually feel about it.

Intellectually I tell myself that I am used to be alone and I will be happy to see her fly out of the nest and take on the world, but emotionally I feel like I will miss her so much. Just two weeks without her and I am having dreams of her getting lost somewhere and me going around desperately searching for her.

I wonder if they have the significance that I am giving to them. Me feeling lost without her?

My daughter is hands down one of the biggest gifts God gave me. Having her has made me a better person. She gave me the courage to do things I never thought I was capable of doing and my love for her pushed me to become a better person.

There is a lot that I have done wrong as a first-time mom. So many mistakes that I look back at with regret. When I entered motherhood I brought with me so many expectations of what a mom was supposed to be, give and receive. Motherhood was a statement of womanhood for me and I felt somewhat entitled to certain rights as a mom.

I poured a lot of my addictions in my relationship with her. Wanting to feel loved, important, special, looked up to, listened to, recognized for my efforts, wanting a sense of control over her actions and beliefs. The list goes on and on.

But with time (and introspection) a lot of these addictions have started to wear off and their  real nature to be exposed. I went from being a multitasking, highly functional individual to a stressed out, drained and exhausted mom.

The demanding relationship I created with her started to fire back and take more energy than I could afford to give and that initial “good feeling” coming from addictions quickly transformed into anger and resentment.

For the longest time I blamed her for being too demanding and energy-draining, but as I learned more about love, I understood where the fault truly laid and began to take ownership for my mistakes.

That is when transformation has began to occur.

Looking inside oneself is hard and I have often chosen not to grow when the opportunity has come to me.

That is one of my biggest faults…being afraid of making the right choice when the opportunity comes. Being afraid of facing my demons when they show up to me. Sometimes it is because of fear, other times because of comfort.

Anger is one issue I relate the most to my desire to stay in my comfort zone.

I am used to deal with anger in a certain way, which is mostly throw it on others. Shift the blame and attack are my two most common techniques for dealing with anger.

The past few years have been quite transformative and I have developed a desire to face this part of me that makes me unloving to others. My daughter has been a key factor in this shift. Seeing her pain and hearing her words has had the biggest impact on me. Wanting to be a better parent has meant moving out of the comfort zone and tackle situations in a different manner. This has also meant dismantling wrong beliefs such us “I’m allowed to raise my voice with my daughter” or “if my daughter pushes my buttons to the extreme, it is her fault if I lose my patience and yell” and so on.

Fear is the other issue I struggle with. Fear of doing the right thing and say out loud what I really want. There are areas where I have been able to face up the fears and do the right thing and I was rewarded with amazing waves of pride and deep happiness, however I still struggle with it quite a bit. As of today, there are so many areas of my life where I learned what the right thing to do is, but I still hesitate to take the step and do it when the moment comes. This is something that has been causing me a lot of deep sufferance at the hands of the law of compensation lately. Having knowledge of the DT principles and being aware of what is the right thing means that the consequence when I don’t act in harmony with love are much more severe than average. Therefore in the past few years I have battled with gut wrenching regrets and torturing memories of moments where I was presented  with an opportunity but I failed to take it.  

Most of the times the belief behind the fear is “I am being too demanding” or “ I am being an absolutely bitch”. Both of them have a lot to do with how I am perceived by others and how they could misinterpret my needs for excessive demands or intentions to hurt or annoy.  It is so hard for me to be able to voice my needs when I feel others don’t approve of them. I have had several opportunities in the last few months to deal with this problem and every time I found some reasoning as to why I could not do what I wish I wanted to do. One time I thought I was being unfair, another time I thought I was being a bad friend, another time I felt I was being too demanding by pushing for something that made more sense to me. In all cases I had rock solid reasons in my head why I could not let myself do what I really wanted to do and that caused me long lasting emotional turmoil.

I can literally see how my sin fights for itself in the moment of truth and how I capitulate under the pressure of my wrong beliefs time and time again.

I talked to God about it. About how coward and helpless I feel in those moments and how unworthy I feel to be called a child of God. I tell myself I don’t have what it takes to be someone who can stand up for what is right (or for what I believe in) and I start going through a mental list of how many people I know that are better than me in this, or that, or that. But then I also see God bringing me more and more opportunities with time, almost as if I got to the “game over” stage and God put a coin in and pressed “continue”.

I figured he must be feeling different than me on this subject if he keeps sending opportunities. The door doesn’t seem shut and, on the contrary, there is a constant gentle push to keep going. But how so?  And why?

There is this beautiful story in the bible about a father who welcomes back is prodigal son. As a child I was always intrigued by the story, and also very confused about it. Every time it was read in church I would listen to it as if it was the first time, hoping to find some answers to my forever unanswered questions.  

Why did Father get so excited to see a son that squandered all of his inheritance on prostitutes and gambling? And why did Father not agree with the complaints of his other son about the injustice of the behavior?

I liked the fact that Father was being kind to the prodigal son, but I also did not understand how he could be so blind to all the hurt that his son had caused. I felt his other son had good reasons for complaining and somehow I felt the prodigal son needed to be punished now that he came back hurt and humbled. His vulnerability meant in my eyes an opening for well deserved punishment so the Father’s reaction seems extremely non sensical.

I never fully understood the story - until recently when I listened to a beautiful, soul piercing conversation on God’s nature and personality (linked below), which had me reflect a lot about who God is and how he truly feels about us and our sin.

The interpretation that Jesus provided in his talk is the following:

Following the realization that his prodigal son had just returned home, father gets so filled with joy that he is beyond himself. There is no mention on what the son did wrong or why, nor judgments about his past or his appearances. There is no scolding for the lack of obedience and rebellion nor punishments for the actions that were taking against the will of the father. There is only deep, sincere love for a child that was once lost and had decided to come back in humility and repentance.

God wept at the sight of that change and ran towards the son that had finally found his way back home. He wept, and he ran.

So here is an interesting thought. When we think that God is angry at us for our mistakes, it is just one of our wrong believes. God is not angry at us for our mistakes; as a matter of fact He has deep compassion for our wrong choices. He can see what the consequences of our choices will bring to us and he feels for us. He has compassion and wants to help.

This is why God keeps bringing me opportunity for a change. He is waiting patiently for me to want to embrace that change that he knows will change my life so much and make me so happy. He is patiently waiting to “welcome me home” on every subject where I lost the way.

There are so many areas where I drifted away from God’s view and I can see more and more of these areas as I progress. “Coming back home” on any one of them is the biggest source of happiness and makes me want to face all the others that are still undone. I haven’t full embraced my way back yet, but every tiny little step that I have taken in the right direction have brought me so much pride, happiness and sense of worthiness. Every step in the right direction has brought me closer to God and I know the distance between us is only determined by my will to love.

Learning more about God, His nature and personality, is helping me realize more what I am doing wrong not only as a parent to my daughter, but also as a daughter to my parent.

The more I walk this path of parenting, the more I understand the intentions that God put into it when he gave us the chance to become a parent.

Parenting is the ultimate act of love and it is one of the fastest ways to learn about true love. Children show us what is wrong in us and what needs to be adjusted because they are more in tune with God and themselves (unless we oppress and control them so much that they become very detached from who they really are). Plus God structured it in such a way that their personality be in contrast with our biggest wrong beliefs so that they can challenge them and help us grow.

Children are beautiful gift and I now understand that parenting has nothing to do with many of the things that most people care about. It has everything to do with loving and giving and very little with taking or feeling something about oneself.

Giving the way God’s give, unconditionally and sincerely, with no addictions or strings attached.

I also understood that, while parenting is one of the fastest ways to grow, it is only one of the many experiences that life can offer. We don’t need to be a parent to understand God and be happy. We don’t need children to learn how to love and progress.

Experiencing life and God’s love for us is truly the most important experience of all.

I once thought I was the daughter of a punitive, judgmental, harsh parent who wanted me to do what He demanded.

I now know that I am the daughter of a Parent who I know and understand very little bit about.

“Man is not a machine made up of standardized parts that may be exchanged and replaced as occasion may require. He is not simply a brute swayed and prompted at the impulse of instinct. He has been created in the image of God, and is a most mysteriously complicated being, actuated and directed in accordance with the working of a Spirit within him which, as yet, he is scarcely in a position to recognize, and certainly not able to comprehend. Hence the greatest and most profound mystery of creation which man has to face is – himself. Nor will the solution ever be reached until man knows his Father – God.”*

I know I have fears to face, arrogance to fight and amends to make.

The way back home is full of rocks, hills and potholes, however I also know that with every step I take in the right direction I am a bit closer to the One who is incessantly working to bring me back home.

Trying to honor simultaneously my Fears and God is the same dilemma that Israeli people had to solve when they decided to turn to the worship of Baal instead of God. The Israelites were waiting for Baal to prove Himself as the true God by answering their prayers.

“On the mountain side were two altars, round one of which a crowd of frantic priests were dancing in bleeding fury, howling for a sign of recognition from their deaf, absent, or mythical God. Beside the other altar stood a calm, travel-stained, roughly clad pilgrim, uncouth in manner as he was unofficial in dress, with a scornful smile upon his rugged face, and his eyes aflame with the confidence of his purpose. He had waited from morn till sundown for the answer of Baal which did not come, and, his patience weary, he turned to the multitude, spread his ands and cried:

“How long halt ye between two opinions?”.

The challenge awoke me.”

– *From the Gate of Haven

God's nature and personality post:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1TkvpmTDvaPB9X35s2jUwj?si=c0baa6d1a3394259

Playlist from Eloisa on parenting:

https://youtu.be/YfMiQxZ9rec?si=tcn4BFXhYi3j6pA3