Patterns

There are beautiful patterns in the world that we ought to repeat for the joy and light that they bring. On the other hand, there are also painful patterns that we would rather go through life without, but which decide to haunt us, surprise us, and repeatedly test us.

I have one such pattern that I’ve been living out in excruciating detail since I was a child. I have been repeating this scenario over and over again for decades now, involving different people yet resulting in the same painful relationships for me.

Psychologists and psycho-spiritual therapists could probably offer a proper name for what I’m going through, and they could even probably help me to avoid this pattern, but I haven’t succeeded in opening up to any of them. They could hold the key to the start of my healing process, but I have not gone to the experts yet on this one. I am afraid it just might open a Pandora’s box of memories.

The slight difference in my personal pattern is, now that I have a personal relationship with Christ, I know that He is working in my life and that I am not going around in circles anymore. He is taking me “from one degree of glory to another”, in the form of a spiral that is going higher and higher, bringing me closer to the Father.

Even with this knowledge, however, “it” happened again. I thought that I had gotten too old for this and that I had already learned the lesson. How I wish I had the power to put my life on freeze frame, just to buy some breathing space and allow me to think. I am only human, however, and so I have to make decisions everyday regarding my response to the situation. I have to live in this little drama again.

For as long as I can remember, I have always thought that this situation was asking me “to do the right thing”. Therefore, all this time, I have been trying to do just that, to consider other people’s feelings as priority, even if in the process I end up ignoring my own.

Sr. Susay, a gift in this time of confusion, offered an observation, and that is that I like to worry about the feelings of the people around me, thinking that I was responsible even for that, because I was programmed to never to wish evil or cause hurt or, que horror, to dare displease anyone. This process does not give value to my own heart. She asked me to try listening to my heart first, not judging or editing all the emotions that are going on there, and then trust that the Lord would take care of the rest.

I have always thought that it was selfish, immature, and utterly wrong to put my own hurts above other people’s, especially those whom I cared deeply for. But I will try a different approach now. Maybe this would put an end to this recurring nightmare. If all the world were a stage, then I had been saying the wrong lines for my part.

May this be the last pain that this surreal movie script makes me suffer, and these the last lines that I write about it.