xo,
Sunni
The other night I was lying in bed drinking my chamomile tea when I got a text from our son Haelon with the headline “I’m at the emergency room”. My heart dropped into my stomach until I read the rest… he had cut his hand at work but was okay, and was waiting to be seen. Phew.
Me and Kenny got up and dressed and drove over there to wait with him, but by the time we got there they had already taken him in. So we waited outside the front of the hospital on a park bench until he was finished (my son is 23 in case you were wondering why I wasn’t busting in there like super mom).
While we were sitting there Kenny said, “well he’ll probably be a lot more careful with knives after this, I’ve been cut really bad so many times, and once you get cut like that and feel that pain, you make sure you never have to feel that pain again.”
OOF. The sentence came out of his mouth and hung in the air in slow motion in front of me like a neon note from the divine. You know what I mean? Those moments when someone says something and it just hits home on every level with total clarity.
Because yes, that IS what we do. All of us have been “cut” in our lives. All of us have felt the pain of being cut, by the many things we’ve been cut by, and yes… when once you get cut like that and feel that pain, you make sure you never have to feel that pain again.
In other words, our old wounds keep us defensive… they keep us protecting and guarding our hearts, and ourselves, and unfortunately that also means they keep us CLOSING our hearts and ourselves, instead of opening. They keep us living in fear of not getting hurt.
The wounds become stories we tell, to ourselves and others, and we wear those wounds as shields. I was feeling my own old cuts at that very moment, I was trying to keep from feeling those old pains again too. I have been writing a new book, and it’s bringing up all my stuff. But as soon as he said it I relaxed a little inside and breathed a small sigh of relief, remembering that’s all that’s happening.
I share this with you because when you pursue your dreams for your life, whether that’s just some small things you’d like to welcome in, or some major big things you’d like to create, it will likely bring up your old cuts, ones you don’t even recognize, and you will likely want to pull back from that pursuit sometimes because inside you’re protecting old wounds and closing your heart. But don’t do it… keep opening your heart anyway.
As I sat there on the bench under the stars in front of the tiny hospital in my tiny town, waiting for our son to be fixed up, I took a birds eye view in my mind, and looked down at us from high above. From up there it was so easy to see what was needed.
There were two people at a hospital in a town in a whole world who is experiencing massive change and uncertainty on many levels, all battling with their own demons inside themselves, in their own ways and with their own particular defenses… and all they needed was LOVE. Love, and to allow and accept the truth of the messiness of the moment, in all the ways.
They, and all the world around them, just needed love and trust and to know how very precious they are, and all of this is. How fleeting, and how eternal, all at once. That very moment, with all its messiness, was a miracle.
Messiness, after all, is step one of all miracles. 😉 Just ask the seed husk, or the cocoon, or the shit that fed the roots of the velvet rose.
Life knows what’s needed, nature knows the ways to flow, and open what’s been shut. When our mind’s cannot grasp it, it’s time to step out of mind, and step into the heart…where all our joy and happiness lives.
Keep opening my loves. To yourselves, to your dreams, to your loves, and to life. There is so much beauty yet to be found.
