A Way to Stop, Drop, and Let Go

I have dreams. I have hopes and I have the need for adventures, which I have not taken yet.
And I have to stress the word “yet” as if to advise the both of us that my best has yet to come.
I want to see new things.
I want to go to places I have only seen in pictures. I want to feel the way I do in my dreams when I see these things.

For example, there is a little place not too far from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I knew about this place for years. And there is a little church known as El Santuario de Chimayo or The Sanctuary of Chimayo that is said to have healing dirt.
This place is said to have healing powers.
So?
Why not look to heal myself?

I remember reading that more than 300,000 people go to Chimayo to touch the dirt and heal from what ails them.
I took this trip.
While I cannot say that the church or its reputation lived up to my expectations, I can say that I had an experience that was beyond what I expected.
I saw people who were ill and people who were on crutches. I saw people in wheelchairs, and I saw a woman so ill that it was clear that El Chimayo was her last and final hope.

I was entering a new level of heartbreak. Everything I had was gone and my self-propelled destruction was clear and painful. I lost everything because I walked away from everything and chose to believe in a lie. At the same time, my selfishness or my self-propelled destruction is not the topic nor does this deserve mention in this entry.
I was walking through my days with a heavy heart. I was bitter and sad.
I was lost in my own head, yet I was alive.
Emotional cancers can decay us from within.
But this cancer is survivable, unlike the stage four cancers that threatens people I love.

I was very much alive and somehow, I had the balls and the audacity to complain.
Sure, I lost.
But I was alive enough to regain or rethink and recompose myself.
I was thinking how I’d be better off if I disappeared.
I mean, who would care?
What would be the difference anyway?
Would it even matter if I just vanished and never came back?

Someone I loved the most told me I should do the world a favor and pull the plug on myself.
So? Why bother?

I say this and I recall witnessing people come and plead with God for another day, just to stay alive.
How selfish am I?
How shallow?
How arrogant and egotistical is it of me to think that I should live without sadness or pain?
Who am I to believe that I should be alive and escape life’s true contests or challenges?

I am so very small.
I am small when compared to the life of a two-year-old who knew and understood that he was so sick, yet all he wanted to do was make his family smile and share his special tomato soup.

I love a good bowl of tomato soup.
I haven’t eaten tomato soup since Jake. . .

I am weak when compared to a Mother I spoke with who buried her daughter when her daughter was only six.
Who am I to believe that I should be spared from life’s downfalls or setbacks?
No one here is above the law. The truth is the law, and the law states that life happens to us all.
Everyone has life to deal with.
Life is both eventual and inevitable.
This is the ride, so choose your methods of transportation carefully and do your best to enjoy the view.

So, bring an umbrella when it rains. . .
Wear a coat when it’s cold and whenever possible, enjoy the sun, enjoy the moment, live to the best of your ability, and be thankful.

But I was not thankful.
I was selfish.
I was angry.
I was caught up in the web of my own lies and stuck in my insecure ideas. I was trapped in a pattern that led me to be preemptive or to attack first and deal with the outcomes later.

Meanwhile, I was sitting in this church and noticed a woman, perhaps somewhere around my age. She was pushing her mother in a wheelchair and going to the different prayer rooms to light a candle.

I have heard about places like this before. I have heard of other places, like Chimayo, where people go and pray with hopes that God spares them from their ailments and saves them.

I had no physical ailments when I was in that church. However, I had a broken heart. I was sad.
But alive.
I was beaten but not dead and there I was praying as if my prayer could save my life.
But I was alive.
In fact, I still am alive.

Life comes with changes and failures and heartaches.
I agree that life can be tough or hard and, yes, life can be tragic and things can happen, and they can be unfair and terrible.
I agree.

I wish you knew who you are.
I wish you could see yourself from my eyes.
I wish you knew that you are more than you believe.
I wish you knew that you are that beautiful

(to me, at least).

And I get it.
Maybe people say the same about me.

I suppose I should tell you about the deepest and darkest parts of me. Or should I dare and tell you about the times when I was too lost or outraged? If I dare, I could tell you how I was too angry to stop or drop and let this go.

Maybe I should confess and qualify for my seat which I claim, here and now. Notwithstanding my downfalls or not denying my addictions to various means of escape, perhaps I should confess right here and right now.
I can expose myself as self-absorbed. Or maybe I should define my inner narcissist, and yes, I say this.
I admit this.
My hands are not clean.
I admit that I was trained and that I volunteered and steered myself in the worst directions.

I followed the path of my dysfunctional forefathers and set sail for my own self-destruction. I learned from the worst and the most hateful. To expose even more, I was nothing more than a child who throws tantrums. I was hurt.
I was sared.
I never asked to look like I do or feel like I did.
I always wanted to be beautiful.
Or should I say I only wanted to be beautiful.

I have life.
I have family.
I have friends.
And I agree that the number of these people are small and growing smaller.

There have been times when I wished that I could fall asleep and never wake up. There were mornings when I’d wake up and think about how much easier it would be if I ceased to exist — no memory, no looking back, just nothing.

I am so small when I see people who are even smaller, yet they dare to live their tremendous lives.
Who am I?
How am I going to be where I want to be?
How am I going to be who I want to be?
Who am I to think or believe that I should be better or above anyone else?
I can’t just cut the line or get what I want without working for it.

I have this idea about getting on a train. This trip has different meanings to me.
But I will save this because I do not want to define this or digress from my point.

I want to get on a train and head across this country of mine.
I want to see the sights.
I want to see the things I’ve only seen in pictures.
I’d love for you to be there . . .
(with me).
I want to see the life I’ve only dreamed of because time is always moving.
Life is both eventual and inevitable.
We know this by now.

Love comes and goes and life blooms and then returns to dust.
And the same will be with me.
I do not know the hour or the day. No one knows.
Not me. Not the angels in heaven.
Not even The Son.
Only The Father knows the hour or the day, which means it is up to me to stop playing God or to stop the ideas to cut my life shorter than it already is — or will be.

You . . .
I suppose I am small to me but not to you.
I suppose you are the same size.
It is easy to think that no one shows love or that no one loves anyone or cares anymore.
But I care.

I remember . . .

I care like I cared back when I walked outside of Mr. Kowalski’s gym class in McVey Elementary School.
Just kids . . .
and all was nothing more serious than a game of tag, grass stains on the knees of my jeans after playing in the field at recess, and little girls with ponytails who smelled pretty.

Blessed Father,
Keep me away from myself.
Send me the grace and your permission to stop, drop, and let go of what holds me back.

Show me love (again)
and let me hold her with all I have.
I ask this in your name,
Heavenly Father,
Pray for us.

Amen