Pause, Reflect, and Heal

During this time leading up to the Winter Solstice and the coming New Year, we have an excellent opportunity to deeply decide what we will take forward in our lives and what we will leave behind.

We must process those things that are holding us back, whether it is trauma from childhood, deep regrets, resentments, or longing for something different or better. We must do the work to bring those painful events to the surface so that we may process them, forgive ourselves and others, and move forward into the portal of the new year ahead. We sometimes don’t believe it, but for everything that has occurred in our lives there have been life lessons if we are willing to see them.

There have been many opportunities in the past two years, the entirety of this decade really, to grow spiritually if we truly look at the situations we’ve encountered. If not, we will simply find ourselves doing the same old things while remaining stuck and missing the many wonderful opportunities life may bring us in the years that lie ahead.

So many times, we remain stuck, pretending that we’re starting anew, but just glossing over what is holding us back.

All the burning bowl and white stone ceremonies in the world are meaningless unless we really do the deep inner work of forgiveness and develop spiritual understanding.

Then, we can clearly state, “I will not take this old issue into the new year with me.” I am leaving the fear, the drama, the worry, and the excuses, and pretense behind.

That reminds me of a fake façade that you see on a building. If the underneath had not been cleared of debris, applied carefully with quality workmanship and materials, it will most likely come crumbling down. I know there are a couple of buildings on the coast that are undergoing this rebuilding process right now where their new façade simply rotted away.

When we first moved to Bay Saint Louis after Hurricane Katrina, my husband was retired and took up a hobby of restoring a few houses. At that time, there were large numbers of people who called themselves contractors, but they were not really qualified. Whether from error thinking or downright deception, some of them took their customers through a sorrowful time. Next door to a house my husband was restoring was another house being rebuilt. It wasn’t long after the owner sold the house to an unsuspecting couple that all the paint and caulking on the outside of the house started to wash away. You see, instead of properly finishing the house, carefully looking at the wood for rot and damage and repairing it, they used interior paint and sheetrock spackling on the exterior. It is no surprise that the paint, spackling and the siding underneath began to rot away in the humidity. It was a true mess.

It is the same with us. We may have glossed over some incredibly painful event/events from the past, whether errors in our own judgment or the actions of others and painted over it with a temporary bandage. That doesn’t last long. We must do the work of clearing away the painful events, forgiving, restoring the heart, mind, and body to health before we can move ahead with serenity and peace.

James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 

We cannot change anything that has already occurred, but we can face it and we can move forward. It may take time. We can face them and grow spiritually in the process. Use this season which is geared toward slowing down, pausing, and going within to sit with your anxieties, worries, dramas, etc. Have a prayer vigil, a meditative vigil. Do the inner work. You’ll be so glad that you did.  JudyV