Are you able to stay with your pain?

I remember reading in a Time Magazine that was dedicated to Mother Theresa and her work and there was a passage about her writing a letter to a bishop stating that she had felt cut off from God for the past 20 years... this incredibly stoic woman reframed her experience as she was given the gift of "christ's last moments on the cross" where mankind had rejected and his friends betrayed him, and his father had not yet accepted him back, and his words were "my lord, why have you forsaken me"?

 

To be emotionally exiled and yet still maintain your faith and do the work you know is the right thing to do to me is simply a testament to the absolute will and character of this woman. I stayed with the story for a while and began to see a powerful story far beyond the events of that time, but a lesson when one is making important and necessary changes in one's life.

 

You will feel betrayed by your old life, your old habits, your old way of thinking, and will be forced to carry your burden (carry your own cross) on your shoulders until such a time that whatever is it that needs to die off of your old way of being releases you to the next chapter of your life. There is this space in between awakening to your old way of being and the new life you are building that can be agonizing, lonely, and deeply painful, but instead of doing everything in your power to avoid it, it may be just the price of admission to your next life...

 

I am never one to lay claim to our ancient stories as simply a myth or an actual record of an event in history, I am more interested in the wisdom that has been passed down through history to us from our ancestors. Life has its hardships, and many of these hardships are wrought by our own hands, but with a little bit of courage, and the willingness to embrace a bit of pain, we can come out the other side into a life of our choosing.