Giving up the fight

"The intense feelings that are not openly and honestly expressed soon come to own you.  When you feel owned or weighed down by these feelings, the only answer is to quiet down to listen to them (to fully understand what you're feeling), and then to share them with a friend, (which lightens the load a little), and then to pray for God's help (which invites you to give up the fight altogether and let Him handle it).  The answer is never in denial or escape, but is instead on the other side of a doorway that is buried deep within the feelings themselves. The way beyond is always through."

I write this thought this morning for a good man in India who seems to be reaching out for a friend, wrestling with "stubborn, old" feelings of "clutter, numbness, and sadness," and I'm happy to be that friend for him.  In his words I hear the frustration of one who has worked on these "issues" for some time.  I can relate to this, as can many of you out there who have been doing your inner work for years.  Healing is very tricky work.  When we rush to declare it done, it prolongs itself.  When we ease into our pain and accept it, it dissipates.  When our eyes clear and we see and reach out for God's hand, we can surrender it up.  So much of so many lives are wasted in trying desperately to be strong and tough when we feel tired and weak.  And yet when we accept our human weakness and give up the fight, our strength returns.
I know that K. understands this, intellectually, so I am not offering it as new knowledge, but as a community prayer of love and support.  And speaking of which, although I know I've sent this to you before, I just had several other people ask me to once again post this poem that I wrote 10 years ago, in the midst of great despair.  It is a prayer of new beginnings, and hope, and transformation, and total surrender, offered up as my connection to my own deepest pain, which is the place from which I can lend a compassionate ear and heart to a friend.   

"The hole in my heart,
once carefully concealed,
has burst open,
and I have fallen in. 

The fall leaves me breathless
and frozen in fear,
not the fear of hitting ground,
but that the fall will never end. 

Hands reaching out to help me
I have pushed away.
Don't rescue me.
I need this. 

They say, in dreams of falling,
that if you hit the ground you're dead.
I've been dead.
I must hit the ground to live." 

After writing this and ready to send it this morning, another good man and friend, W., reached out to share a passage from a recent Tom Clancy book he's been reading that fit right in with today's theme, so I add it for further reinforcement: 

"After all these years of sailing, Kannaday had thought he understood what it took to be a man.  He believed it meant a willingness to take on muscular challenges.  Exertion made the male, danger made the man.

That was what he thought.  He was beginning to see that he could not have been more wrong.  Being a man meant doing things that did not come naturally, where the risk was in challenging one's own beliefs and traditions. In his case, fighting back with mind instead of sinew (or maybe giving up the fight altogether?).   The exertion still made the male.  But it was the knowledge (and wisdom) gained that made the man."