New Life.

This may sound wrong, but in recent days I have been carrying within me the thought that God is for me both a loss and an invaluable gain. It is difficult for me to measure this loss; I do not know whether it was small or immense. I cannot grasp it from the perspective of time or from the place where I am now, walking with Him. For I do experience Him… and yet for a long time I could not admit to this lack. To the fact that I cannot accept. To the fact that I thought I was already healed, that everything within me was already in order.

And yet something keeps emerging. Something that I have hidden from myself. And it is so hard to step out of the comfort zone, out of the tomb of Holy Saturday. For there it is familiar, predictable, safe. To move into Easter Sunday means to allow something to change. It means to allow life to rise within me, and that, after all, is painful.

So sometimes I close myself off in my disarray, in false humility, in immense ego, in all that is happening within me. And what flows through me. And then… I set boundaries for God. And I miss the experience, even though He is there, every day, constantly speaking. And I often ignore Him.

During my last meditation, a simple thought struck me: how can we be ready for great things if we do not notice the small daily blessings? After all, it is from them that trust begins. From small signs of love. And I measure my encounter with Him in meditation by the measure of His experience in my prayer. I know that this is a consequence of some rejection. I know. But how hard it is to accept. How hard it is to leap over that.

That is why now I am trying with all my might to look with my heart. I do not allow reason to dominate too much. I do not know if that is good. Perhaps it is an escape? Perhaps it is once again my hiding away.

And now something else is being revealed. I am beginning to see my faults more clearly. And this is both extraordinary… and painful. For I want to be close to God, but when I stand in truth about myself, it hurts. And I have noticed something that has somewhat knocked me off my feet: there is a tremendous desire within me to fix myself. A desire… to improve, to be better. But not in order to be free, only to be perfect. For God.

And I know that it does not work. That it will not succeed. Yet so often I try with my own strength, with the same mechanisms that hurt me. And through all of this, it is hard for me. It is hard to be in relationship with Him, hard to be in relationship with myself. And I increasingly feel that… it is simply hard to love me.