USEDGrace and the Beloved

Last Friday I was in the middle of preparations for a New Year birthday lunch and the compilation of a memory book for my daughter when I was interrupted by 2 mini strokes.[Edited: It turned out to be a hemiplegic migraine]. Instead of the plans I imagined I found myself in an ambulance with sirens blaring speeding to hospital.

This was the theme of last year for me too. I was supposed to be at school, teaching my classes, but my health interrupted all my plans. I met this initially with resistance and when it became obvious that I had to take ill-health retirement, with grief. Life is not the way I thought it would be. I am virtually housebound and have little energy. But I have learned so much through these so-called interruptions. I see how much of my experience came from my mind and this insistence on the way things and people ought to be. The one thing I did consistently was reject the way things actually are. This permeated every area of my life – my feelings, my relationships, my health, my body. I have developed curiosity about things now. Instead of saying “This should not be happening”, I am asking ” Why are you here? What lessons are you here to teach me?”. The most precious part for me though is the welcoming and acceptance of my own emotions. I allow myself to feel what I feel without labelling it wrong. All parts of me are welcome here, the healthy and the unhealthy, the scared, the alone, the joyful, the peaceful, the terrified, the bored, the grateful – all of it – because this IS my life. This is my one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver says.

Watching everything I have worked for over the last 10 years slowly slip from my grasp has forced me to contemplate why I pushed myself so hard.

I think that my sense of self, my assessment of my own worthiness was tied up with achievement and success. Perhaps everything we do is, at its core, an attempt to feel that we are loved, that we have a place in this world. That what we do matters and is of value. For me, this translated into working hard and trying to make a difference.

But last Friday, in Accident and Emergency surrounded by my husband, my children and their partners, I realised that being beloved has nothing to do with achievement. In their worried faces, I saw love. I saw the family we have created together, that is expanding and will continue to expand as more grandchildren are born.

In the messages that were sent to me by friends, I was overwhelmed by the heartfelt expressions of love and support.

And I realised this is grace.

That somehow I had it all backwards. That to find yourself “beloved on the earth” is simply to accept the truth that we are loved because we exist. That it is nothing we earn or have to strive for.

The poet Hafiz writes:

“Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.”