KISS IT ON THE LIPS

It seems I have always backed into my answers...what I've call "getting there bass-ackwards."

I found early on that praying, begging, pleading for God, or anybody/anything else, to relieve me of my anxieties only made me more anxious. Could, in fact, bring on an anxiety attack. And anxiety always translated as total madness to my scared mind.

One day I was so frantic, so scared, so out-of-control in my head...afraid that I was going to have a complete nervous breakdown and wind up in St. E's in a straight-jacket for life, to be specific...that I wore myself out. Finally, sitting in the middle of my bed on a beautiful spring day in 1973, I said...out loud..."Maybe I'm supposed to have a nervous breakdown." With which I decided I might as well accept it and get it over with. So I closed my eyes and told "it" to come on.

When nothing happened, I didn't know whether to be relieved or perplexed. "Now what do I do?" was all I could think. But you best believe I never forgot that lesson.

I don't know how many times after that that I forced myself to "welcome" whatever it was I was fearing before I realized that as my Answer. I called it my "kiss it on the lips" technique...and got a LOT of flack from others who c/would not go there.

I was reminded of "my technique" this morning in my Lenten reading where a poem by Charles Peguy was quoted:

We needs must take our stand at sorrow's very heart.
And be firmly placed at the axis of distress,
And by that sacred need to bear a heavier load,
And to feel more deeply and go the hardest road
And receive the evil at its greatest stress.

There it is...a twofer: First, my reasoning mind's fear, "please, God, anything but that," is God's meeting-up place...where I meet the God of my understanding waiting to lift me up deeper. Second, proof positive that nothing I say or think is original to me.

Thank You.