I have had my two little pups for a few weeks now and I love them both but I feel a special affinity with little Tippy. She is afraid of everything and yet works so hard to be happy and brave.  The slightest noise will send her scurrying into her kennel where she crouches and stares out with her big eyes. She has the whole world in front of her (metaphorically speaking) and yet spends a lot of her time in the corner of her kennel.  Sometimes if she cannot get to her kennel she will jump up on the couch and squeeze into the corner.  If I touch her, she is a tight little ball of tension and when she sees the opportunity, she explodes off the couch and into her pen.

I have an advantage over Tippy. I know there is a big beautiful world out there. A big beautiful, scary and dangerous world that makes me want to live safe in my own cage.  It’s too hard to process my painful memories and I push them away. I live inside my little box of a world and let my actions sabotage my chance at a full and beautiful life. Why choose to feel when I am safe inside my little cage?

Fear keeps me hunkered down in the cage that I have built for myself.  I refuse to feel the pain that comes with the memories. But this makes me numb and now I cannot feel the joy that is waiting in the world for me because I refuse the pain that comes with being a human being. And I am fragmented into dark corners and eddies of memories that wait to ensnare me and feed my fear. I have chosen numbness and a kind of death instead of aliveness and presence to be awake to what life has given me; both the pain and the joy.

So now I choose again, I choose to step through my fear and feel the pain and the sorrow so I can feel the joy and the happiness. I will honor my body and remember the distressing experiences. I will have faith that I can survive the difficult feelings. I know that the pain will move, once I release it. It will pass through and recede and on the other side of the pain, I will be whole and alive to be who God meant me to be. I will be able to fully connect to that spirit within me that calls me to create. I will welcome the difficult and the delightful and fully feel all that makes me who I am meant to be. To become fully human and lettered in the language of the heart and strong in the face of the pain that life sends my way.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. – Psalm 139:8-10

I know I cannot do this by myself but I am blessed; with friends who love me with all my humanness and frailties; with God who promises and indeed is with me even through the darkest times; and with my pups who love me in spite of the fear they have learned in this world. And I will honor my painful memories because they are a part of what makes me who I am, they make me afraid sometimes but they also make me human and remind me that we all carry our humanness with us and all God’s creatures need understanding, empathy, and compassion.

I love early spring flowers. The daffodils in my yard were here when we bought the house over 30 years ago and come up faithfully every spring. The crocus are fairly recent and are even earlier than the daffodils, sometimes even through the snow. They are a reminder to me that there is beauty in the world even through the tough spots.