Love
The {heart} ventures wherever it pleases. You feel its longings, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
The {heart} ventures wherever it pleases. You feel its longings,
but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
What is love?
How do you recognize it?
What does it require?
What does it give?
Why might the Universe purposely cause such a disruption in my (and my marriage) life this way? Why would a content, thriving woman in an ultra-happy, fairly traditional marriage of twenty plus years suddenly be thrown into such upheaval, confusion, and change?
These are the questions I have grappled with from the beginning. From my developing inner intuitive sense, and from all of the crazy synchronicities and familiar reassurances I received in response to my requests for guidance and clarity, I knew that I was on a purposeful, planned expedition to somewhere good. But where?
Today I have some distance and perspective to see some of the fruits that have been born. And to see how this is exactly what I — and we — needed in our journey to Love.
For me, it started with this realization: love is living from your heart. And the measure of love is vulnerability — allowing someone to have power over you. Unfortunately, due to a traumatic childhood, I carry around tenacious blocks to vulnerability. I have spent my adult life going through the motions of my love relationships only half alive, half feeling, half present, emotionally and spiritually inhibited from intimacy in matters of the heart. The risk has always been too great, but that means the reward has also been out of reach. In order to truly love, feel, and know another, you have to set yourself up for the worst pain—and potentially the greatest joy—imaginable. It almost feels like a terrible joke that the gods played on us. If I want to know the ecstasy and bliss of deep, soul-baring love, I have to be willing to be painfully affected by the people I deem worthy of that love. I have to face head on my debilitating childhood fears of rejection, abandonment, and mistreatment.
The only advent in my life that I’ve ever felt like my heart was completely cracked opened was in becoming a mother. Suddenly, the most tender, protective, selfless, vulnerable love filled my heart and I felt as if I truly understood love for the first time in my life. It was a bit of an awakening for me, the contrast between motherly love and the guarded, self-protective, somewhat closed down way I felt about other loves. It showed me that a kind of deep, affected love is possible, but still it was elusive to me in other relationships.
Why was I so closed off? I grew up in a home with two powerful male abusers. Via many methods of rage, control, and abuse, it was primarily my dad who stole so many things from me. But worst of all he stole my ability to trust men.* As a teenager, I remember making a vow: I will never let a man have power over me again. I wasn’t conscious of the impact this oath would impose upon my life, but it was made out of desperation and despair. As a result, I carried intense anger, bitterness, and a surprising amount of self-loathing into my young adulthood and into first marriage that proved very destructive. It took counseling therapy, support groups, a plethora of self-help books, and at least ten years of conscious work to forgive my abusers and stop boiling over on those closest to me (unfortunately therapy did not address my self-loathing, something I suffered with even into recent years). But I didn’t have the insight then to perceive how much I sabotaged my heart’s health and happiness, nor did I possess the skills to deal with my wounds.
*[My experiences throughout nearly four decades of my life spent in a controlling, repressive, partriarchical sector of Christianity, indoctrinating me with the image of an angry, abusive, punitive god image only reinforced the damage and distrust of men].
The ending of my first marriage at the age of 31 was a profound loss, which was the beginning of a season of several other life-shattering losses. The deep-seated belief/fear that was buried in my subconscious from all of my collective experiences was reinforced: everything you let into your heart space is going to leave. On the other hand, I experienced a surprising gift from the ashes of brokenness. My heart inexplicably and exponentially started a healing and growth process because of those losses. This led to the beginnings of the breaking down of the walls, even though I didn’t yet fully recognize or understand those walls yet.
Unfortunately, I brought the remnants of those fears into my new marriage to Steve at age 33. Very occasionally, I had awareness that I was pushing away vulnerability in my marriage relationship. He occasionally tried to broach the subject of feeling like something was off in our emotional intimacy, but I brushed it off. If sometimes I did observe the hardness in myself, I felt helpless to do anything about it. I didn’t know what it was or how to recover it. It felt as if a part of my heart was missing…or dormant.
Early on in my interactions with Marita, she picked up on my resistance to vulnerability. By this time, it had become a general life practice to hold everyone (except my daughters) at a comfortable distance where they didn’t affect me too much or have too much power over my heart. The idea of letting anyone in too far didn’t feel safe.
It was somewhat easy to let my guard down with Marita in the beginning. As a woman and a newfound friend with whom I had so much in common spiritually, she was not a threat to my safety. But as things progressed between us…as I felt the deep, inexplicable connection between us, the old tension in my heart began. Yet, there was something about Marita that made me feel compelled to let down my guard. It evoked a deep longing in my heart for her love…for the softness, the tenderness, the gentleness that she emanates. Somehow I needed her love, so the idea of pushing her heart to arm’s length felt possibly more painful than my fear of trusting her love. It felt both safe and unsafe at the same time…like a crossroads and a cross. I had to choose the outcome of my life. Do I want to go to the grave never knowing how it feels to be truly seen and yet still loved, despite the risks?
I remember her saying to me, “It’s okay J. I have enough love for both of us until you trust me. I’m not going to go anywhere. I’m going to keep loving you hard until you can fully love me back.” Since that time, her love has been relentlessly determined to painstakingly coax my skittish heart out of its shell, indeed a challenge. Some days it feels like a giant game of hide and seek as my inner child brushes up against things that scare me. But there she is with her gentle, nurturing, soft energy that allows me to come back out of hiding. I do think I’m learning to trust…to allow my heart to really love as it was intended. Only time will tell.
I think my fear of the vulnerability and nakedness of love — with all its potential for pain and loss — might be that taproot fear underneath all my fears. It’s truly been a harrowing journey. I have felt terrified by the depth of my feelings toward her and how, for the first time in my life, I feel capable of letting down this drawbridge. Marita has helped me want the reward like never before, to love with abandon and feel loved by both my partners.
Honestly, it’s also been challenging within the monogamous paradigm programming of our culture to make peace with loving two partners. In my child-self head, love is limited, competitive, fragile. In my new world, love is generous, cooperative, and fiercely loyal. Love is not scarce. Steve can love someone else and not have it threaten how he feels about me. I can love someone else and not threaten or diminish my love for him.
I have realized in recent years that the most important quest of this mortal life is to learn to love. Breaking down this barrier in me, I now realize, could likely not have been accomplished by a man. I mean, I have been living with the greatest, most gentle and loving man in the world for over twenty years. The Universe knew what it would take for me, and it appears to have nudged me in that sacred and profound direction using the package of Marita.
Whatever package Love arrived in, I am forever grateful…and forever changed. Marita is not only helping me heal in the area of love, but I believe she’s bringing healing to Steve’s life through my breakthroughs.
The heart is mysterious. Wild. Unpredictable. Trying to control the heart is like trying to coral or direct the wind. Setting out on a heart-led journey is like following the path of a river. Who can say what landscape it will feel into next? Who can say how rough, or how placid the waters? Who can say how much beauty or how much devastation one will pass through on this long journey through life? You get in the river, and the only real way to go somewhere is to put your feet up with courage, trust, vulnerability, and hope.
And now, I leave you with one of my forever favorite poems that captures so perfectly, so emotionally, the beauty and pain of Love.
On Love
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon
the people, and there fell a stillness upon
them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his
pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he
crucify you. Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and
caresses your tenderest branches that quiver
in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and
shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred
fire, that you may become sacred bread for
God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your
heart, and in that knowledge become a
fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only
love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover
your nakedness and pass out of love’s
threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes
naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be
possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say,
“God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am
in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have
desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook
that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own under-
standing of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate
love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the
beloved in your heart and a song of praise
upon your lips.