my dark night of the soul...

I have been doing heavy soul work during this Lenten season. I have extended my morning meditation/prayer time and, as a result, I believe that I have entered my dark night of the soul. I bring this here because I am called to do so...if you read on it is because you are called to do so...

I was wounded as a child-not physically or sexually, but emotionally. I know you are saying, "Who wasn't Rebecca?" And that is a valid question...but I am feeling the need to go on with this anyway.

I was wounded by my father who was emotionally detached, wanted a son when I was born, and often stated that I was "worthless." My mother overcompensated by holding on tightly to me, yet she was emotionally distant also. This disconnect with my father led me into relationships with men who were emotionally detached from me and could never give me the love I so craved. Yet I returned again and again because I believed that this was all I deserved.

I seek out sources to fill that hole deep in my soul. Adulation, praise, winning, success...all were, and still are to some extent, my drug of choice. I must continually be filled with massive overdoses of esteem in order to function. Like a sad puppy, if you give praise, I will perform for you forever regardless of the neglect or pain you inflict.

I have accepted this woundedness in my psyche and my mind, but I am still wounded in my heart and my soul. This is what I came away with during my morning meditation today. It is stuff I have been dealing with for may years. It is why I had built up an overabundance worldly stuff - because it meant love to me. And loosing it means a failure and another loss of love to me.

I am too smart to truly believe this, you might say; yet I repeatedly come from this place of need. And when a person operates their lives from this place of lack, it shows somehow.

I was able to keep a glossed-over facade for most of my life. My mother taught me to splash my face, put on some lipstick and 'pretend' everything is all right. If I pretended hard enough and long enough, I usually began to believe it. But reality intervened last year and blew my world, pretense and all, into a million tiny pieces. So many pieces in fact, that I probably will never be able to gather them all back together.

Yesterday's meditation was about the puzzle of my life. All those tiny pieces. The meditation brought me to the edge of a precipice with Jesus. He showed me the puzzle that is my life. I saw as far as my eyes could see an incomplete puzzle. I was carrying a massively large, heavy puzzle piece on my back. It was in the form of a large slab of stone. I was hunched over by the weight of this piece and labored ever so slowly to take it to the place it fits. It was breaking my back to carry it.

I understood that I would never complete this puzzle in my life. I have always wanted to know why things are the way they are. I am overly curious to a fault. He said, "You don't need to know the answers to begin..." to put my life together, to heal??? are the questions I am left to answer.

My life had two distinct divisions...before I broke my neck and after I broke my neck. The after has been an uphill climb filled with pain, sometimes bearable and other times unthinkable. Yet I live and walk and breathe...

I am challenged to find joy in my burdens and suffering. Jesus said to me clearly, "In your suffering others will find strength." My journey is a steep climb with heavy burdens. The path is rocky with many stumbles and falls. If my journey will give others hope then I must put it out there. So I share my dark night of the soul with you today as vulnerable and as raw as it feels to do so...

Millions of enlightened souls have entered their own dark night of the soul. This is where the journey leads you. It is uncomfortable and frightening but very necessary to grow into our spiritual maturity. Once in spiritual maturity we are free to co-create with God and the universe with the gift that is uniquely our own.