From my childhood, I started to feel and rise to the pressure of being top in everything, and that grew in me through high school, into college, and into adulthood. It has affected every part of my life, from my work to my motherhood to my friendships to my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my body. It is everywhere and I have lived my life always under the influence of it.
This is worth practicing, because there are a lot of things in the world that seek to throw us off, to make it hard to hear our own voice. So today, take some time to listen. To listen deep in your soul, and to notice: what is important to you? What is lifegiving to you? What is growing you? And also: What is distracting to you? What is dragging you down? What is life-draining to you?
This is worth practicing, because there are a lot of things in the world that seek to throw us off, to make it hard to hear our own voice. So today, take some time to listen. To listen deep in your soul, and to notice: what is important to you? What is lifegiving to you? What is growing you? And also: What is distracting to you? What is dragging you down? What is life-draining to you?
My life is constant interruptions. How am I supposed to let my real self shine when my real self is constantly interrupted, sent in a different direction, shut up for a while because little people need to eat, need to figure out how to argue with each other without fighting, need reminding that they are definitely not done with their homework and they have not touched their chore list? How can I live into my deepest real self when, just as I get on a roll writing something, the puppy rips an ornament off the tree and proceeds to destroy it all over the rug I just vacuumed?
Seek genuineness; try to live my best, most authentic self. But how do I find my real self amid all the interruptions in life? My deepest desire is to live as authentically as possible, yet the distractions of daily life threaten to throw me off track…until I realize and accept that the distractions are perhaps the point, are perhaps the means to deepening me into my most authentic self.
I want to learn this. I need to learn how to live fulfilled without being on top. I need to learn how to be calm and confident in myself in a way that is not enslaved to either pride or shame… Which are really the same thing anyway. I need to learn from Joseph.
I want to be the star; I want to get the attention. I want to be celebrated and held on high and be the one who speaks in front of everybody and gets the kudos and the applause and the laud, to use a Christmas word that means “praise”. But Joseph didn’t get the laud–the tiny baby did, who was adopted into his line.
I was raised in a home that was not only open to God’s will leading our lives, and so we went through some hard times that helped us grow, but also a home that taught me that Love is not about you. That life is not about you. That you are not the center of the universe…the center of anything, really. Instead, I was taught more along the lines of Cicero: “You were not born for yourself alone.”
I was raised in a home that was not only open to God’s will leading our lives, and so we went through some hard times that helped us grow, but also a home that taught me that Love is not about you. That life is not about you. That you are not the center of the universe…the center of anything, really. Instead, I was taught more along the lines of Cicero: “You were not born for yourself alone.”
