Holyshitballz, y’all.
Holyfuckingshitballz…unlearning fear is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. It’s been with you a looooooong time, learning all the ways what you need to feel secure, safe. tucked away with your fuzzy socks and the predictability you’re accustomed to.
Then somebody’s God is going to show up and push you right up to and through all the damn boundaries and rules of the game you set around keeping yourself safe; a roof over your head and people in your court. The past few days have been full of fear, afraid to go out in public because I might crap myself fear as the belly roils. I’ve been in the sphincter-loosening kind of fear (vastly different from the sphincter tightening fear, if you’re curious).
Again and again, every message counters with, “Be Still. Don’t force. Remember what you want. What you say you need isn’t that way. Trust. Live in trust.”
So, I’m going to tell y’all this story talking exactly like I talk to God. He and I and She and I have a thing. Each iteration of It/They has a different style and elicits a different one from me. God takes my smart-ass and will hand it right back with zero judgment.
When someone showed up a few weeks ago in the wee hours and said, “Wait for God,” my immediate response was an out-loud, “Well, God is late!” Two weeks later, “Just wait for Her.” Days later: “Be still. Be still and know.” Every attempt I made to ‘fix it’ or ‘figure it out’ or ‘do the right thing’ or whatever ‘the thing’ it was to keep myself safe was met, each time, with ’No. Be still.” Each of these encounters was predicated by my scrambling to 'make it work’, finding a way to do a thing that would keep me housed, no matter how uncomfortable it was. Because I’d finally landed in comfort, in a place of beauty with people who appreciated me! And I can't stand up in the face of losing that yet again.
A few nights before Christmas, I heard so clearly, “Trust in ME. Trust ME,” and said in such a way the implication was trust 'not in this mamby-pamby universe will provide talk' but in Me, as God, talking directly to You, the Christ I made for purpose, on purpose. One Being, to another: Trust Me. Again, in response to my making it work’ safely.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck….trusting is hard. Trusting is hard when your wiring is made up of all the little actions that brought you through some craptastic shit. Shit that others couldn’t, haven’t, survived. In this case, it’s all the little actions that have kept a roof over the head and were not an option any longer; the contortions that cause deep physical and psychic pain.
No. Be still.
Fuck you.
Be Still.
Shut up.
Yes, that’d help.
I don’t know how many of y’all have had actual arguments with God and called him everything but a child thereof but I have for years. Ever since he showed up and asked me how I was going to define myself in 2008? What the hell, man. Who asks that kind of question and then leaves someone standing at the kitchen sink stuck with the damn question. When I hollered back, “What that fuck? I’m just Ingrid!” Because am I not enough as I am? Except the Universal response was, “Mmmmm mmmmm…nooo, you’re so not!” Not enough wasn’t the issue. Not ‘Just’ was their redirection. What the hell does that even mean?! Then I learned that (which is another story) but still had to find a way to make it in the big-wide-world.
How’m I supposed to trust someone to show up when they pop in to say ‘before there was, I was’ or drop a bomb-question and leave me to dry the dishes by myself?
ohholyshit…the stomach roils, the scared little girl says, "See, I told you so," and everything says, "Be Still." "Trust"
I don't know why I can't fully trust that it'll work out when I've seen it over and over again. I think it's because the 'working out' seems like it's come from me pushing and pushing, and pulling, and begging (oh, god how I've begged and hollered and berated and...), and praying and it's never felt like enough; that the bare minimum is all I'll get.
Someone said to me last week, while I was doing some mental gymnastics, that it's because I've not valued myself and that's absolutely not the case. I know my worth, beyond all the miracle-stuff, I've known it. It's just not how I measured anything. It's never occurred to me that I didn't think myself unworthy.
It has occurred to me that I'm not pleasing enough in anyone else's eyes, not doing enough for God or Ancestors or what have you and therefore I'm not getting enough in return. Then I feel guilty for thinking that the Universe or God or the gods should be paying me for doing all this work; as if I should expect a quid pro quo for going where others won't or whatever.
When things have 'come together' in the past it's come with just enough to eke it out, squeak by and there's nothing within me that can do that any more. I don't have it in me to accept scraps as gifts or payment. It's why I did the 'job thing' last year. However, that beat the snot out of me, each time, at each turn it drove me into exhaustion and depression, drowning and imprisoned. In the same way I can't do the scraps-thing, I can't do the job-thing.
All of the messaging the past two months has been, “It'll be fine. It'll be more than fine." "Wait for God" showed up when I was looking for a job so I can do the rent-thing (because that's a gotta-happen thing no matter what else happens). "Just wait for Her" came two weeks after that when I was in the same mental mode.
“Why limit yourself?” “Why limit it?” is the frequent response to ‘would you please just drop the rent in an account’? Why limit? Because I don’t know what’s on the buffet. You tell me there’s bacon? I’m all over it. You tell me, ‘it’s mystery meat’, I’m not. I’ve never been greedy, never expected anything highfalutin’ as they say. And I’ve not seen the memo that everyone else has been cc:d on. Just the bloody basics, please, but may I request the bacon crispy? Thanks.
Fear is often declared the devil or a fault of our own, a misjudgment on our part, a ’block’. Fear, though, is a thing, an internal signaling that we are not safe. It’s come to each of us for a reason and stays with us to protect us from that reason again.
Messages from as far as the UK "why won't you just make it easier on yourself", "why not just be in your humanness instead of focusing on being 'expanded and such.'"I don't focus on being expanded, it just bloody fucking happens--it's spontaneous. My fear is the damn humanness. My fear that I'll not be able to stay where I am, fear of judgment that others will think my faith is misplaced or I'm not 'doing enough' for them to help me if I have to ask for it again. My fear that I'll have to ask for it because for all the God-talk, it won't show up--HE won't show up. Fear that I'll never have enough rest or be able to sink into hope and dreams of a joy-filled future. Fear that the past six years have been a shit-storm for nothing, that what's in my heart of hearts will never be seen or come to fruition. If I have to ask the community for help again, how can the community trust me? How can they trust me if my own trust isn't met with tangibility? OHholyfuckingjesus.
All I want is the security of getting paid so that I can live something resembling comfortably. I want to see the promises of "it'll be more than fine" in a way that supports me doing things like buying art supplies (first world problems I know but...). I want "new beginnings" and "it's coming together" to fucking come together. Hell, I'd settle for the belly fear being assuaged just a skosh, for another month at least.
I remember the joy and competence and community and purpose and friendships and straight-fun and hard work and exuberance and pleasure that paid off before this spiritualwhateveritis and "how will you define yourself" took over my mind and body in 2009. I want that again but would settle for the rent being paid now (and The Voice now asks, "Why settle?" Because, duh.)
I've done some really hard things but this? This is second to only breaking all contact with my mother and father. To hear "be still" again and again--sprinkled with "wait for God" all while everything else is screaming, "Just fix it! Get the damn job!" Except everything.else--even within the hollering--says, "No. Be still. Try trusting this. Just try." So, I've trusted a few minutes, hours, 1/2 days, even the occasional whole darn day at a time but
fuuuuuuuuuuuck!
I feel like I'm being squeezed by a pressure to perform; on one side to fit societal standards and the other side to meet Universal measure of something I just can't see, have no solid connection to. It's like I have two options: implode under the pressure or assume the stance of 'there really isn't any pressure if you'll trust" (not my words, btw). Right now, the latter is winning out.
All of this is compounded by finding the notes I took with the lengthiest conversation I’ve had with God in July 2022. I’d been given the direction to go to the National Cathedral. I know that when I’m sent to a church, it’s for a reason. So I went.
Here’s what happened:
After being pushed away from the inner chapel so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed hearing the prayers by others, the string of messages came:
"You have been heard. You have always been seen. As this space is for you, yours is for
others...
Your sacredness is your architecture; your building of pain and fortune have equally brought you here.”
To hear God speak to you, in one of the holiest of holy spaces is something that can’t be described in these few words, any. How He continued while I sat quietly, notebook in hand, in the middle of tour groups, surrounded by statues of dead presidents and held in stilled song.
“You cannot be contained. Your confinement has been your own choosing
(I still don't know what that means, really)" I actually said, "How can this be contained? This cannot be contained!" when I got off the acupuncture table three weeks ago having no remembrance of hearing it before.
And still don't know how to be uncontained but supported. This, right here is the question.
When I asked about my deepest heart, The Voice and restlessness in the belly I heard, “This is lifting the vestments of self. This is the change, the presentation of yourself to the word, to the world. You are bearing witness to [your] re-evolution."
"Your painting is prayer, your presence is pray, poetry is prayer....the word/ the words are those things that won't need interpretation...peace is presence, passion is prayer"
"Crow is as holy as any image or idea of Gabriel"
"The power of your truth is that the greatest love is real..." This right here? Yeah. Except how, exactly, can this unfold?
"Go to the lightness when it's appropriate. Go to the fight when it's appropriate; always in presence, always in peace..."
"Allow yourself to be held, guided. Direction is not confinement, it's where freedom lies. You are the presence of God and need not ever feel pain again but what is inside you, you must feel." This right here? This, this is the deepest fear, surrounded by the deepest for a little girl who at the age of four became consciously aware that her mother wanted to kill her and if not wanted to, just might in a moment. The past three days are the experience of this little girl and, oh. Oh, how I love her and I don’t want to wrong her in the same way that’s frozen her for 50 years.
"Humility and confidence aren't far from each other.”
"Be here, be loved."
"Offering yourself is the mechanism...(in answer to my how the heck do I do whatever it is you're asking me to do--which over a year later I still don't know)…I don’t know how to offer myself to you, to others. See the above. How do I share the power of my truth when so many are afraid of it or I don’t know how to get it to people. I’ve tried so many ways, each seeming to be right at the time. If I were throwing spaghetti on the wall, it’d all be on the floor because al dente has never
“Reintroducing joy and you will for others"<<<---when I heard this I was surrounded by a breeze in church and energies moving around my head...except I don't feel joy with one singular, magnificent (repeated, though) exception.
"Take nothing for granted, take it all as a gift. Paint like you mean it, move like each step is new...Allow, receive, see the gifts, the giving of trust, faith, freedom..."
"Breathe now...what was, is no longer. Go with confidence in your strength, grow your faith by watching, listening deeply, hold your own but loosely."
I don’t know how to Be. I’ve been told that my Beingness is enough. Except there’s a thing ‘to do’ that’s pushing through and I don’t know how to be it. Healer? Painter? Crime-stopper? Justice institution agitator? Bringer-upper of bones that want to go home? How do I Be in a way isn’t containable? How, in the loveliest paradox ever, how does the vessel that can hold, that which is The Uncontainable move through the world? Be supported in the world so that those who need the greatest love, the fullest expression of God’s love, to hold their hearts for a little while? Change their hearts for the long-while?
How do I trust in God, in the idea that I am safe when most measures of it in our modern society say I am not? How do I Be the thing that was created in the answer to prayers from so, so many. The grief-filled, fear-fueled honest prayers for mercy and grace and proof asked for for so long?
How do I offer myself in a way that brings me freedom of movement, merriment, money and the deepest mercy, knowing of being cherished that so many want, deserve, and need to feel like they can fully breathe? I don't want to be afraid, I don't want to distrust. I want to feel freedom and softness and the peace that others always feel around me. "I just want to sit in your peace." I mean, people say that to me and yet I can’t feel that as I struggle to make something stick to the wall, pay the rent, love on that little girl who deserves her own mercy and the dignity of being the gifted-one she is.
Y'all, I don't have any real answers to this. I'm told again and again, "It'll work out. You're safe. It's fine, you're fine" and in beautiful moments I believe it. In other moments, I need to make sure the toilet paper is nearby. How does one Be Still and hold the space for following God's direction while not able to pay the rent? Someone wiser than me said, "There's a reason why it's called blind faith." Yep. There's a reason and it beats against every signal for 'survive! survive!'. He, that Him, said this morning, "You're caught in the trap of thinking you know how it needs to come." Yep, that too.
When I think of the more famous iteration of me who felt all of this and more, but walked straight to the cross, I think, "Well shit. If he can do that, I can do this." I just don't know how except to Be Still. Trust. And, it's bloodyfuckinghard.