What love requires of us
Greetings lovely one,
I was actually going to write about something completely different when a new muse suddenly hit my newsfeed and I decided to sketch out some thoughts around it. This will be a very short letter.
The question “What does love require of me?” was a timely one. I’ll be reviewing my year next month using my handy-dandy life in a notebook system; while preparing to do that review, I am reminded of my theme for 2023 — to live the questions.
I’ve been journaling all of the different questions that have come my way that gave my gut that “Peter tingle” (hahaha!) and I’m not too surprised that the algorithms graced me with this post, pausing me at this question. What does love require of me?
A big answer for me personally was to grieve properly. By no means is this the extent of how I’m living this question, but I can say that love doesn’t bypass a yearning soul. And sometimes that yearning for something deeper, something more than a current reality, something transformative — asked us to go on a journey of rediscovery and the climate of that journey ain’t too comfortable. It is full of uncertainty, it is a place of the unknown, it sometimes requires us to let go of the snapshot we have frozen in our head of the family of skewed memories, or the career we thought we’d have, the dreams we used to dream, the person we “should have been,” etc. Everything — all the things — that have kept us feeling stuck and immobilized to make any sustainable and lasting positive change. Letting go is painful. It’s heartbreaking actually … and I honestly felt like I was crawling out of my skin much of the start of the year. I asked the Lord … what do I do now … who am I to be now, with those holes in my heart.
I found myself all the way on an island in the middle of the sea wondering how the heck I got there. How the heck did a lot of things that seemed impossible or highly improbable come to fruition? I sat with many questions and my grief, often in aloneness, in silence, in the cocoon. Until I was all cried out learning to live with loss and the surprising curiosity I still had for life. (The Acceptance and Peace stage.) Love required me to heal on a different level than I had been asked to do before. It asked me to reach further down in places therapy didn’t quite touch … I needed soul-level healing because love required me to fully accept my vocation as a consecrated woman, and call to ministry. It wasn’t easy, but it was — and still is — worth it.
I’m working on something really awesome for 2024 to hold more space for the work of transformative love. Stay tuned for more.
In the meantime, I offer you the same opportunity to pause and ask yourself: What does love require of you?
Peace, Love, and Wellness,
Lynette
(I was reminded that it’s been a while since I’ve shown my face, so my lil sis snapped some shots while I was waiting for holiday chow time.)
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Tales from the blog keepers
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It’s a gift to have a lot of empathy for others, but it can also be emotionally exhausting if you have poor boundaries. Here’s “How to deal with empathy burnout.”
Muse of the month
Take a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gvykck
Blerd’s the word
I was invited to geek out about my love of anime on my friend Emily Guy Birken’s new podcast. I had a lot of fun discussing how I got into the sci-fi and cyberpunk genre with Emily and her sister Tracie Guy-Decker.
I even talk about sci-fi and theology. (It’s a thing!)
Take a listen and be sure to subscribe to their podcast: https://dtass.buzzsprout.com/2215123/13890957-deep-thoughts-about-anime-with-lynette-davis