My morning prayers are inspired by the images you see in this blog. Sometimes I simply sit with what I see, lost in awe of the art patiently created by a friend, or a photo that captures a moment I would surely never have noticed. In time I jot down what I see and those notes become the blog posts I share. For many weeks I have been praying about anxiety, at a loss for words and surely without an image to inspire me. Then my amazing friend Dorothy Smith posted this acrylic painting entitled ,’Balancing Act’. What I saw in her work crystallized my thoughts and prayers.
Psychologists define anxiety as ‘apprehension, tension, or uneasiness that stems from the anticipation of danger, which may be internal or external’. The word anxiety seems to be part and parcel of almost every conversation. Sometimes anxiety is caused by a particular situation. Often anxiety is caused by things that are bigger than life, things we wish we could control but are beyond our reach. Are we all really anxious or are we simply convinced we should be anxious? Has the fight or flight response been dampened down into just freeze?
I see anxiety as a desire to either do it all or do nothing. Neither alternative works very well. Whether we like it or not, what we do, and even what we say, affects others. Small actions and gestures can either make or break our day. How we welcome others into our homes frames our entire time together. That welcome applies not only to guests, but to those we live with. Do we create anxiety simply by skipping the common courtesies of life? Are we damaging ourselves by failing to treat others as we would like to be treated?
Perhaps anxiety stems from a deep wound we have buried inside ourselves. Some of us may carry around a burden that gets heavier each day, a wound that is unable to heal because the wound fails to see the light. I don’t know about you, but once I let the trauma surface, I find I am far from alone. A healing had been prepared for me, a healing that was more that I could begin to imagine or hope for.
Burying my hurt not only affected me, it also affected those most precious to me. I held back part of me I was sure they could never love. All I really did was create a gulf between me and them, a gulf filled with fear and despair. With a hole like that in my soul, is it any surprise I lashed out? No wonder life seemed so overwhelming.
So I set about a healing journey that is now almost three decades long. This sort of healing is a process, a balancing act. Sometimes I need to be alone to deal with what surfaces. Other times just being in a coffee shop with people around me works. Often I just need to be held.
Yet what helps the most is dialogue. For me prayer is dialogue with God, where God does most of the work. I simply show up, expecting nothing and hoping for the best. Some days I think why did I bother, only to find at the end of the day how that time apart made all the difference in the world. I am called to reach out to others, to be present to their hearts and minds and souls. Yet in God’s economy, listening to others, deeply listening and meeting them where they are, opens up a space where both of us heal.
Does that mean I am immune to anxiety? No, far from it. Yet belief that there is more than is humanly possible and trust in the healing power of prayer leads me to do my part. God may call me simply to listen and share the journey with another. Make time today to take care of yourself and others. Accept that what God asks you to do is often inconvenient and uncomfortable. Trust the healing that has been prepared for all of us. Say yes to the small part you are called to play, often without ever knowing if what you did made a difference. And always remember, it’s God’s plan we are meant to live out, rather than our own.
Text by Connie Chintall ©2024, All Rights Reserved
Art entitled ‘Balancing Act’, 20×30 acrylic by Dorothy Smith©2024, used with her permission, All Rights Reserved.
It’s a cold, blustery day and I am hoping the dogwoods in my front yard will bloom before long. I love all the flowering trees in Virginia, like the one in this photo by my friend Heidi Anne. It has taken considerable contemplation to unearth the significance of such a tree to me. Memories seem to surface when we are ready to take hold of them. I contracted the old fashioned measles when I was five years old. The fever spiked at 105 degrees and my grandmother packed me in ice in her clawfoot tub. She refused to let them take me to the hospital because she was convinced I would die there. She felt the nurses were overworked and I needed more constant care. In her words, I was ‘too close to piercing the veil’. After the fever broke I spent three weeks in a darkened room with a radio turned down to a whisper. The volume knob had been removed to keep it at that level. Old fashioned measles was notorious for blinding and deafening children that survived. Any loud noise or bright light could compromise my senses for the rest of my life. I did end up with a weak left eye, the side that faced the bathroom door while I was in the tub full of ice. My hearing is actually more acute, an effect experienced by those who were meticulously cared for. I do not remember much about those three weeks, except an overwhelming sense that I was not alone. I knew my grandmother and her friends were desperately praying for me. She fed me that fact with each and every meal of jello and each time she checked to be sure I was drinking water. It was more of an abiding sense and a knowledge that a healing waiting me. I made up stories in my head and listened to all sorts of strange radio stations. Perhaps part of what gave me hope was that untamed imagination that is the prevue of every five year old. My most vivid memory is sitting on the porch for the first time after those three long weeks. Being outdoors seemed like a fairyland, and every color, every sight was over the top. It was early spring and there was a blooming tree in front of the porch, a tree a lot like the one in photo. Even my perspective mimics the photo, since I was in a reclined position. There were even flags of a sort that glorious day, at least flags in my imagination. The veil my grandmother feared I would pierce had become a direct line to the heavens. Life of any form was beyond precious, something miraculous and awe inspiring in its own right. My life since has been full of ups and downs, uncanny victories but also devastating disappointments. Yet regardless of what life brings, I begin each day with pray, with hope against hope in what may seem to others to be beyond hope. You see I have no choice but to believe in prayer, because without it you would not be reading this blog. I have been living on borrowed time for all but five years of my life, and God willing, will continue to live on borrowed time for as long as God needs me here. Make time today to thank God for your precious life, given to you breath by breath. Let the wonders of nature speak to you. Pause to contemplate the beginnings of new life on the trees, the nodules that began to grow last autumn as soon as the leaves fell. And most of all, trust in the healing that has been prepared for you, and deeply and slowly breathe it in, one breath at a time. Text by Connie Chintall ©2017, photo entitled ‘Direct Line to Heaven’ by Heidi Anne Morris ©2015-2017, used with her permission, All Rights Reserved.
Seek the Sacred Amidst the Ordinary 