As my life continues to grow and change, Frozen Spaghetti continues to be the place for these moments of introspection, the words for the things that connect me to those around me, to the themes in my life… to God.
These connections are made possible by realities like how, as a mom, you make your kids cry sometimes – sometimes even on birthday weekends.
When you are doing the right thing for them and they don’t love that? That is tough. And though one of the worst things is disappointing your kid because of your stance of “no, this really isn’t right” or “no, this really isn’t time” or “no, we really are not ready”… what is worse is kicking yourself because you didn’t trust your gut.
A sincere nod to trusting yourself.
Zooming out – there is a lot going on in my life and the lives of my children & husband. I don’t feel burdened, but I do feel taxed. Like that slow burn of transformation is definitely happening. I have come to learn there are different qualities of change. Change is a spectrum. What’s wild about the change happening in my world is it is the change of “up in the air, this is going to settle”. Which is different than, say, the change of “something has to give, the bottom is falling out”. There are different qualities.
While timing and ideas evolving vary, the one thing I have really learned lately is the importance of orientation. When things are shifting, your north can still be north. I have been thoughtful of this a lot lately as I, personally, have oriented myself in the world as “yoga studio owner”. Do I know what this is going to look like? No. Do I know what I am going to learn this means for me in terms of hard work? No.
Do I have ideas on these answers? Yes. I have some pretty good ideas. And they align with my true north.
I have been paying attention to the earliest things I do every day. I spend time sitting energetically with the day, with my life and feeling it.
And this is where the spiritual part of this whole piece kicks in…
<pause here or go get a coffee / tea / water and settle in, because this is the learning. soli deo gloria>
On Friday night, February 16th, Ellen (my 18 y/o daughter) was driving home for the weekend to not only surprise her sister for her birthday but to also get a hug and some home after being terrifyingly close to the shooting in Kansas City, where she was celebrating the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win with the masses. She heard the gunfire live and it was ricocheting, hourly / before bed, in her mind & body. <inhale. sigh>
In the midwest, there was a freak snowstorm on Friday afternoon. Before I had a chance to tell her I didn’t think the roads would be clear, she had already headed east to Saint Louis and, low and behold, about 6:30pm, she showed up on the map about an hour and a half out from home at a dead stop. The interstate had been shut down due to a massive pile up and people ended up being stuck… for 10 hours. (Here’s the story.)
Ellen, fortunately, had gotten off the highway to wait it out at a gas station. We had been on the phone on and off, trying to strategize & understand the extent of the shut down when it was 12:30a and time for us both to try and get some rest. She rolled through where she had her money & keys, how she had prepared her body for warmth, confirmed she locked the doors and asked me if there was anything else she should do before trying to close her eyes in a parking lot at a gas station in the middle of the night. Sounded like she checked the boxes. I told her I loved her and we got off the phone.
At that point, I laid in bed and wondered, “how do I still care for this situation?”
Well… through prayer.
But what do I pray for? For her to be safe? Safe from what? Thinking through that list sounded like a great way to keep me up all night.
Do I pray for her to discover something about herself? This was clearly a challenging night. Not in a “dark night of the soul” kind of way but definitely a dark night. And as I start to explore what could possibly the lesson, I know to back out. Her faith. Her spirituality. Her relationship with God. Her understanding of divine timing. Her attunement to the energy of her life & whether or not it reflects ultimately what she wants is really none of my business. :) <insert my love for this verse>
Even if we have known somebody their whole life, like a mother knows a child, the child has their own individual life, their own conscious awareness, their own journey that they have to figure out. To think that you have any real ability to navigate that network beyond maybe a thread of understanding is not only insane but a total waste of time.
And even if you could snap your fingers and have a really good, deep reading of where they are in life – even if things seem obvious – you have to remember that in a human’s life, inner knowing & wisdom is subtle. It is subtle beyond language, beyond left brain analysis. So subtle that the only way for the wisdom of the child’s life to be accessed is through the child’s body & breath itself. And those are their own.
So there I was, in bed, with this remembering that her body & breath are the pathway to her wisdom leading me to the answer to the question of how to care for the situation was, in fact, through my own body & breath.
I pictured her and performed a body scan. I scanned her from the soles of feet to the crown of her head. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. I went left and right, right to left. Inside her body. Outside of her body. There were no words. It wasn’t about protection or the “blood of Jesus”. It was about feeling and, if anything, it was also about clearing. If I have any power here as her mother, it is to clean her. :) So I imagined cutting cords and clearing off from her body anything that could be holding her back. Holding her in restriction. Holding her in a shape she is ready to shift out of. This is a highly energetic form of prayer. And as I boldly approached the throne in this way, I started hearing song lyrics: “The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning” over and over and over.
And there it was: the reality. She was sitting there in a parking lot. Though alongside hundreds of people. She is alone. She is tired. Stuck. In the night. It probably feels like it is never going to end. But there is going to be a dawning. There is going to be a moment that the sky starts to get lighter and the sun is going to start rising up, brighter, and soon it will be morning. Things don’t stay the way they are forever.
We are always somewhere on the spectrum of change.
There were some other miraculous things about that experience. The fact that she was able to sleep the next day when she finally arrived home after fearing nightmares after the shooting, was – in and of itself – a blessing. The way particular people showed up brought me to tears. But it was how that experience prepared me for Monday that really brought the whole thing together.
See, on Monday, my other daughter – Lucy – had a true dark night of the soul. Not a dark night, like Ellen. Rather, she was dealing with the reckoning of not having done some things and it was now the moment of truth. She was at the “and now it is too late” and there are options no longer available. As the mother, I was the bearer of that news, disappointing her because I was trusting my inner knowing.
She was tired. She was sad. She felt hard on herself. She felt critical. And she fell apart. She wrestled. She called me from the kitchen, “mom I need you to come to the kitchen right now”. She was in bits and pieces. I saw it was not the normal “I’m tired and still have homework” but a sincere need to sleep and wait out the sun. She said she felt alone.
So here’s what is fascinating.
Ellen, on Friday night, was actually alone. On a dark night. And I was able to be with her…. energetically be with her.
Lucy, on Monday night. On a dark night of the soul. I was able to physically hold her. Sleep by her side. Put a hand on her.
The energy of holding, in both situations, was the same.
I can’t help but further trust that when I am physically gone from this earth, that this holding will be the same. It has to be the same. Because it is the same now. I think this is why there is meant to be no fear in death. Because this idea makes it no longer about having faith that you have chosen the right belief or having faith that you are doing things that are somehow serving some ladder of fortitude upward towards heaven. It is not about having decided or having done anything.
Rather, it allows life to become living through the reality of the nature of consciousness and one’s own awareness of the infinite peace within us.
The envelope of skin, yes, holds us; but the actual way that we are is boundless.
I imagine fathers feel something similar. Yet, it seems to me that, as women – as portals for souls coming through us – that there is a potency and an availability to pray for your child through what in yoga we would call the bliss body, the most subtle layer of our existence.
There is a lot of power in this, for me. A strong sense of knowing. A deep sense of peace.
May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be well. ✌🏽erin
Frozen Spaghetti 