After a grueling religious deconstruction, who is a girl to trust?
By: JANA GREENE
I’m trying this crazy new thing, and it’s called trusting my intuition. It’s crazy. My whole life I have been coached to never trust the human heart – especially your own – for it wants its own way. It is deceitful and full of the flesh, they said. It will steer you wrong, they said. But I am finding it an oracle itself, not separated from a loving God by sin, but part and parcel of the Spirit.
God himself (or herself?) put it in me – intuition. Why would we be sent into the wilderness with sub-par equipment? Is he like the producers of “Naked and Afraid,” letting us choose our one, inadequate tool for the whole journey – and SUPRISE! It’s shitty intuition! Here you go, here’s a stick, when you could have used a pocketknife or a can of “Off” spray!
Godspeed, Kiddo. It’s a jungle out there. Whatever you do, lean NOT on your understanding!
I can no longer fathom that our consciousness is separate in any meaningful way from the Source. So, intuition – while not perfect – is trustworthy, in that it has much to teach us. In the realization that it’s not a sin to consult our intuition is a game-changer.
Most of my life, I have shushed my intuition in an un-valiant effort to prove to God that I had a faith bigger than my understanding.
But the gut is a quiet thing if you’re not used to listening to it. It politely tugs at your hem, whispering “excuse me, please, but I have a feeling about this.” Listen to her until her voice steadies. Listen to her until she is heard and BOLD. But for God’s literal sake, LISTEN TO HER. Say “yes” to the copious heaps of lavish grace and decide to stop eschewing it for distrust of self.
We are so afraid to honor ourselves; we forget God is not the kindly warden overseeing us while we do time in our flesh prisons, but the living breath in us – part and parcel. Holiness is our DNA, and all the self-flagellation in the world cannot whip it out of us.
My gut tells me that it’s true.
Can I get an AMEN?
(Part II to come: Trusting the intuition of others)
Can you tell yourself three things today, while standing in front of a mirror and probably feeling silly about it? Can you commit to affirming yourself every day with your own voice, and praising all the iterations of who you are, have been, and will be?
Just three things each day. Easy peasy.
Tell yourself one thing you love about who you were in the past. Childhood to menopause, doesn’t matter – just one good and true thing about the past version of you.
Tell yourself one thing you love about yourself right NOW. Remind yourself that the current iteration of YOU deserves to be reminded she is strong and capable. (It’s kind of a f*cked up time to be alive, but you are killing it, sister!)
Tell yourself one thing you will love about yourself in the future. What attributes do you strive for? Who is the person you want to be in a more evolved state? Be positive and believe it’s true!
I’ll go first:
I love that when I was a child, I was scrappy, and able to carry burdens to heavy for me. I am proud to have overcome the trauma. Wow – that little girl was STRONG!
I love that right now, I am the most spiritually free I’ve been in my life. God reveals himself in nature and in music, in friendships, and in the least of these. It is for freedom we have been set free, and it took me all these years to understand what that meant. Freedom is everything.
I love that in the future, I will be able to use my gifts to help others. I will practice a peace that passes understanding, and my countenance will be calm. I will forgive myself more readily, judge myself and others less harshly, and stand up for myself when I need to.
I challenge you to drag your ass to a mirror every day, look into your own eyes, and come up with three things each day.
(And don’t worry about running out of nice things to say – you’re very lovable and brave and strong. Always have been. Always will be!)
Peace be with you, Readers.
PS: Feel free to share your three things in the comments! We are all in this together.
Good morning, Reader. Well, the sun came up again. Damn if it doesn’t just keep happening. You know what that means, right? At your stations! Here we go!
It’s okay if you run to your station, but it’s also okay to inch, crawl, stagger, or be dragged, so long as you rise and report to The Universe you are present. Being present is everything.
Accept that – like Jesus – your holiness and humanity both get to seize this day. He, being 100% divine and 100% human (just like you) equipped to get through the muck. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. He was also a Tipper of Tables.
You get to respond to every new challenge in the way of your choosing. You’re not just rolling with the punches. You’re not a victim, but a participant in this miraculous, jacked-up, eternal production. I know it feels victimizing sometimes.
I am waving to you from my station this morning, hollering at you from over here, “HEY! IT’S ME, YOUR FRIEND WHO IS ALSO EXHAUSTED, BEFUDDLED, FEELING BEAT-UP, AND ANXIOUS! I’M HERE TOO.I KNOW THIS IS HARD. KEEP GOING, OKAY? YOU’RE DOING AMAZING!”
Love always starts the show and always takes the last bow. Remember that when the antagonists seem to be winning. Remember that when the plot is thicker than pea soup and it looks like the bad guys are winning.
I dream about babies a lot. At least a few times a week, there is a baby storyline in my slumber. I have two daughters by birth, who are now 29 and 32. I am not a spring chicken.
But in my dreams, I am a young mother. In keeping with the surreal element, the child is sort of an amalgam – a blend of both my daughters, but neither in particular.
My therapist and I suspect the baby – always a girl – is also representative of myself, and of my children. Whatever bizarre elements of dream-realm events that happen in my sleep, the theme is always the same: I MUST take care of this baby at all costs. I must save her from whatever crazy dream plot may come. Lots of silly storylines surface, but lots of dark ones too. Maybe I am keeping her safe from Keystone Cop capers. Maybe I am smuggling her out of a concentration camp.
Like I said, sometimes it’s heavy. Sometimes it’s scary. But that baby always makes it out okay.
So, I dreamt last night that this baby was a newborn, so fresh that her umbilicus was still attached. It was cold outside, and we were sitting on a park bench somewhere, and she was wet and crying. I lay her down and undress her to change her diaper, and she is doing that newborn thing where they fling their arms out wide in a startle.
She is afraid she is falling, and I am fastening her diaper with one hand, while trying to grasp her two tiny hands to her chest with my other, all the while cooing, “Shhhh, you’re not falling. I got you. You’re okay, little one! I love you!”
Pediatricians will tell you that this movement – called the Moro reflex – is just that…a reflex. As a matter of fact, it is used to determine that the baby is healthy and normal. If they do not startle, there might be a problem neurologically. Even baby primates do it.
But when my babies did it, it threw my instincts into overdrive. They were so sure (with their six days of lived experience,) that they were falling. We might as well have been a mother and baby chimp, so primal was the urge to make that baby feel safe. A baby in a startle reflex is a pitiful thing, as their little faces contort into something akin to panic.
But I could fix it, you see. Soothing words, a tight swaddle, offering the comfort of the breast – all things that I could do to make them feel safe. Honestly, it was the only time in my mothering life I felt like I knew what I was doing, and I haven’t felt that way since, and like I said – I’m no spring chicken.
This is the fourth dream I’ve had in a week’s time about the baby’s pitifully startling. And I’m sure that this particular incarnation of the baby is me. Because I have felt like I am falling for eight days now, since the election. I know many, many people who feel like they are living in a constant Moro reflex, feeling like we are falling. Except no one can assure us that no, we are actually safe. So we panic and flail.
And truthfully, it’s not just the political state of the country. I have felt flail-y for months, since The Diagnosis in June. I haven’t had time to recover from one startle before the next flail-worthy event. Family drama. Occasions for grieving. Never-ending health woes. Elections.
We need someone to grab our hands and hold them to our chests, so that we can know that – yes, it seems like the end of the world, but can you feel that beating? That’s your heart, and it’s still going, rhythmically and with regularity. We need someone to shush us gently so that we can hear our own breath, and know that we are still nourished by air, even as we feel as if we are falling.
So, this morning when I woke with the dream so fresh in my mind, I lay still for a good while. I could still feel the grasp of the tiny hands, so I asked myself what I could do to feel safe. I told myself soothing words. Words like…
You’re not falling, it only feels like it.
God’s got you.
I wrapped the blankets around me tight in cocoon of swaddled security. Feel the mattress beneath you, I told myself. I am on solid ground. I am warm and safe in this moment. I brought my own hands to my chest, where life keeps beating, in spite of the panic.
We must keep our littlest selves from falling. We must comfort her as if she is ours by birth, because she is, you see. We are birthing the best versions of ourselves, even as we startle. We know how to do this. We know how to nurture the whole wide world; it’s just our turn to be nurtured. We know what we’re doing, we’ve just been taught not to trust it.
May you feel grounded and comforted today, even if it’s by self-soothing. May your panic be calmed, and the things that bring your mind terror be tamed. Your fear of falling is an inborn instinct, but so is your ability to find comfort. No matter what storyline is thrown at you.
Words by Jana Greene 