Where Do You Live (From)?

Sorry I've been gone for so long.  Grad school keeps me busy along with two jobs, an internship, the greatest friends and sisters in the world, blah, blah, blah...  I'm back.  And I've got so much on my mind.

I haven't written - not because I lacked ideas - but because I've had too many.  And if you know me, you know that it's tough for me to make decisions when I have too many options.  Well, I've made one.  Here we go...

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Where Do You Live (From)?

Two people each meet a potential mate.  They're the same age, live in the same town, work in similar jobs, and share similar dreams of happiness.

Two people score a desired job interview.  They're of the same education levels, similar intellectual capacity, matching previous experience, and share comparable hopes for success.

Two people plan a party.  They spend about the same amount of time on the menu, decorations, guest list, and both hope it's a successful and memorable night.

So what?



People are doing these types of things all day, every day, all around the world.  We're just living our lives, right?  Going about our days, meeting with people socially and professionally.  We try to start the day on time, end the day on time, and be on time in between.  We are fulfilling duties, completing projects, meeting expectations, perhaps exceeding them at times, and just doing life.

My question isn't related to what we're doing.  We're all busy doing this thing called life - every day.

My question isn't even related to why we're doing it.  That's another blog.

My question is related to how we are doing it.  How we are living...  Where's the will coming from? Where are the ideas coming from?  The creativity.  The drive.  The resilience.  The next steps we take... Where's it all coming from?

Because depending on where we are living from, those scenarios I described above will look radically different.  They'll feel different.  And they'll lead the people in them to different realities.

What do I mean "where we live from?"

I lost my mother a little over 7 years ago.  It was one of the most devastating losses of my life, and I carry her last breath with me everywhere I go.  Shortly after her death, I would see older women on the street, women possibly around her age, and long to talk to them.  I wanted them to like me, to visit with me, to look at me in some kind of maternal way, and want to adopt me.  I felt the excruciating vacuum left by my mother and her larger-than-life presence, and I was struggling to fill it up quickly.  I didn't want to hurt.  I wanted to feel the same as I did before - whole - and I was desperately seeking a new filler.

I did not, of course, audition potential mothers.  I didn't even approach the women who looked the part.  I simply recall wanting to.  In those days, all I seemed to see were mothers and daughters.  I'd walk into a store, supermarket, or subway and all my eyes found were similar features - older and younger, identical laughter, and bonded women.

I was living my life out of a place loss.  My thoughts, attention, focus, and desires were born from a deeply penetrating, devastating loss.  My actions and desires were desperate.  Creative, yes. But desperate.

After time, after much intentional and focused grieving, the wounds associated with her passing healed, and the scars of her memory traced themselves into my heart.

I was free to live again.  Free to see a mother and daughter again and feel joy for them rather than a dull, aching longing for me.

So where do you live from?  Wounds or healed places?  If we're honest, it's a combination of both.

If we are living from wounds, no amount of filler will ever fill the hole.  We'll find ourselves in places that seem to be a repeat of the past - destructive patterns.  We'll also have emotional reactions that seem irrational given the stressor.  Only they're not irrational.  We are simply experiencing emotions relevant to the initial wound rather than the present situation.  It's displaced emotion. Fully connected to our hearts, but disconnected to the situation at hand.

If we are living from healed places, we don't seek filler.  We seek new experiences.  The vacuum no longer exists, sucking our time and energy into itself.  We are free.

How can you tell the difference?  Listen to your heart and notice your patterns.

Listening to the heart means getting attuned to strong emotional reactions.  Often, when we experience strong emotions we blame ourselves:

"I'm such a jerk for getting so angry."
"I'm such a wimp for taking this so personally."
"I'm so stupid for getting so upset."

Or we blame others.

"____ makes me so angry!"
"If ____ would just change, I'd be fine."
"If people would just act like decent human beings, I wouldn't get so upset!"

Look within.  Chances are there's an open, gaping wound.  (That being said, some people are just plain difficult.  But strong emotional reactions, even to those people, say more about us than them.)

How else can we tell the difference?  Destructive patterns.  That's a sure sign that we're playing out a conflict buried deep in the heart, over and over again, trying to resolve it.  Save the time; go straight to the wound.

What if we are consciously aware of what this wound is all about?  We can remember its source, the first time we felt it, and we can plainly see how it led to destructive patterns?

The next step is grief.  Beautiful, difficult, meaningful grief.

(But that's another blog...)

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
~ Psalm 147:3