Standstill

It is barely September. I am already mourning the loss of summer. All the sweet, salty, sandy memories of the sea, and of family, friends, and my last love haunt me at night. I sit in the dark silence of my apartment, alone, and try with all my might to hear the ocean waves tumbling rhythmically onshore. Instead, I hear the drone of Interstate 40 outside my window. In the daylight, I try to settle back into my life here in Memphis, and cling desperately to the little joys of teaching, to the furry energy of my puppies, and to the faces of new friends I barely know.

At this moment, there is a pressure behind my eyes, from tears years old, but tears I have cried a thousand times before. They feel hot as they sting my eyes, and I hate them already. I know them all too well. A familiar argument starts up again inside me. The one between my head and my heart. It has been so long now, this fighting, and both my head and my heart are bitter about the lack of resolution, yet neither has been able to compromise. Meanwhile, I am left tired. A growing sense of self-loathing won't leave me alone.

My head screams at my heart, for the millionth time, "But if you would just be IN LOVE with him, then we could be happy! You keep begging and pleading to be happy, but you can't embrace the man who loves you more than anyone on this earth??? We could be married with a beautiful family by now, the white picket fence... EVERYTHING YOU WANT!! All the pain and loneliness of searching would be over if you would just BE IN LOVE WITH HIM."

My heart, exhausted from the fight, whispers simply, "But I am not in love with him. I have tried. But I am not."

My head insists on presenting a litany of arguments to my heart at this point. Even though we have all heard these arguments a thousand times. "1)He is so in love with you. 2)He dreams of making cute little babies with you. 3)He would treat you like a princess for the rest of your life. 4)He is committed, and would be forever committed, to honoring you as his wife. 5)He wants to make you so happy. 6).... 7).... 8)...."

My heart and I sigh at this point. We are both so weary. It has been three years. The shame in this fact sobers my head for a moment, and I realize there is a gray cloud gripping my heart. What kind of damage have I done to myself over this time? Being stuck on this carousel, damning myself to make the same mistakes over and over again, has no doubt taken its toll.

Letting go of him terrifies me. I have tried numerous times. Each with various and obviously limited amounts of success. It seems that there is always a critical moment when I cannot continue. Not one more step forward can I take, and I go running back to him, to his familiarity, to his comforting embrace. I do not know how to operate without him in my life. It seems the love I have for him is painfully not enough to make me feel comfortable with the idea of "forever," but equally and painfully enough so that envisioning life without him is like ripping off a limb. This purgatory of in-betweenness is maddening.

Last Tuesday night, surrounded by a group of strong, supportive women, I stumbled upon a little bit of truth that blew through my soul like a cold, crisp winter breeze. It started with a little bag filled with stones.  "Ask a question. Anything you want. And pick a stone." So I did.

"What's going on with my love life?" I asked. The little stone that emerged from the bag had a single straight line carved into it. Isa. Meaning standstill, withdrawal, ice. Laughter escaped my mouth before I had the chance to think. "How very fitting," I heard myself say.

The explanation for Isa:

"The winter of the spiritual life is upon you. You may find yourself entangled in a situation to whose implications you are, in effect, blind. You may feel powerless to do anything except submit, surrender, even sacrifice some long-cherished desire. Be patient, for this is the period of gestation that precedes a rebirth. 

Positive accomplishment is unlikely now. There is a freeze on useful activity, all your plans are on hold. You may be experiencing an unaccustomed drain on your energy and wonder why: A chill wind is reaching you over the iceflows of old, outmoded habits.

Trying to hold on can result in shallowness of feeling, a sense of being out of touch with life. Seek to discover what it is you are holding onto that perpetuates this condition, and let go. Shed, release, cleanse away the old; doing so will bring on the thaw.

Usually Isa requires a sacrifice of the personal, the "I." At such a time, you cannot hope to rely on help or friendly support. And yet there is no reason for anxiety. Submit and be still, for what you are experiencing is not necessarily the result of your actions or habits, but rather arises from conditions about which you can do nothing. What has been full must empty, what has increased must decrease. This is the way of Heaven and Earth. To surrender is to display courage and wisdom.

And yet there is another face to Standstill. Just as winter is a time for going within, drawing Isa can announce a time of restoration and renewal at the deepest level. In your solitude, exercise caution and do not stubbornly persist in doing your will. Remain mindful that the seed of the new is present in the shell of the old, the seed of unrealized potential, the seed of the good. Trust your own process, and watch for signs of spring."

As I read the explanation, a strange sense of familiarity and relief spread over me, and tears poured down my face. My soul began to breathe again, it seemed. This little stone, Isa, has now become both my meditation, and my challenge. I want to walk forward into my winter, with a sense of calm, and "trust my own process." The hope of spring gives me a reason for the cold struggle, and helps me forgive myself for all the mistakes I make along the way. I must let go (my god how fear grips me in just having to type those words!) and cling to the notion that the best is truly yet to come.

As I stand in the doorway of my winter, holding tightly to my new found resolution, I am quickly reminded: Oh yeah, I am a control freak. Letting go comes about as easily and as naturally to me as playing softball does. (Picture an awkward, athletically-challenged preteen doing pirouettes in right field.) Indeed, this letting go is, and will continue to be, a daily struggle for me. Especially when with it comes the fear of so many things, namely (more) pain and heartache. Tonight's solace (because I can only handle things like this one day, one night, one hour, and sometimes only one moment, at a time): a quote by Paulo Coelho, which comforts a bit of the anxiety that bubbles in my heart.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."