coping

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Don’t Worry!

I just drew this angel card:

BLESSING IN DISGUISE

“What appears to be a problem is actually part of your answered prayer.  You’ll understand the reasons behind your present situation as everything resolves.  Trust in heaven’s protection and infinite wisdom to answer your prayer in the best way.”

This was in response to a request for information about the overall lesson I’m supposed to be working on through all of this upheaval, the bigger picture.  Oh, those angels.

I must believe this on some level, because I say it all the time, and it comes out easily, like something I believe.  I especially say it in regard to my spouse’s future.  I know it will come out all right — I know his star is headed up — that he’s moving on to something that’s a better match for him (though I don’t know what that may be).  I noticed I don’t say it as much in reference to myself, my own future.  A major era is coming to an end for me in ways that are totally unrelated to Hawk’s job.  It’s time for me to be moving from “student” to “professional” as I finish grad school and massage school within the next month.  I’ve been freaking out for the last couple of days about all the change … worrying. 

I think some of what I’m experiencing is just natural grief as some important things pass out of my life — a part of life’s cycles, the dying of each moment into the next.  And another big part of what’s been getting me down is worry, the irritation and distress at not knowing what’s coming next, not being able to control or predict it, not knowing what to do in the meantime to ensure a positive outcome.  Being afraid that whatever happens it’s going to be painful for me and there’s not going to be much reward at the end of it.  I.e., experiencing (unnecessarily) the imagined painfulness before it happens — if it’s even destined to happen at all.

Friday I had a whole mini-lesson on this very topic.  I say “mini” because it was only one day compared to the months-long transitional period we’re in, but it made a dramatic impression on me (and it did seem to go on for the entire day, repeating the theme across multiple contexts).  This was a day I’d been planning for the past week — a “fun day” in St. Louis.  Hawk was going to drive out to meet me in the middle of a weekend I’d be spending there for school; we’d use some free movie tickets I’d acquired to go see the new Star Trek movie, spend the night at my friend’s and generally make a day of it.  A city date.  And, I thought, we really MUST go to the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis — we definitely had to before leaving the state, and this would be one of the best times of year to see it, early May.  So I planned this whole day around us going to the gardens, searching online for places to eat, routes to different movie theaters, gay places in the same area to go dancing after the movie.  It was an elaborate itinerary and it kicked off with the Gardens and so damn it, we must have a good start!  Everything must go well!  With all the stress we’d been under (individually and as a couple), I thought, we really needed  this day of fun.

(I hope that from my exclamation points, capitals, and italics you can gather a sense of the pressure I put on myself about this day.)

Hawk was supposed to meet me at one, after my anatomy class let out.  This class begins at 9 a.m.  For at least five hours straight, I kid you not, from the time I woke up in the morning until fifteen minutes after one p.m. it poured down rain in a five-hour thunderstorm.  It thundered and lightninged the whole time.  The sky was dark gray and the rain was pounding on the patio roof.  I was sitting there for the entire class thinking, F, f, f!  How can we possibly go to the Botanical Gardens in this?  The whole day is going to be RUINED!!!

Well, I reluctantly patched together some backup plans.  Someone told me we could still go to the Climatron (I was bemoaning this situation to several of my classmates who knew the city better).  I was like, Yeah, okay, sure.  We’ll do that and it will be okay.  It’s sure not May flowers, though.

Well, at 1:10 I was waiting for Hawk to show up.  (It’s a two-hour drive from Columbia and he’d gotten a late start.)  I had to stand behind the door of my school and look out because the rain was blowing so hard horizontally into the porch. 

At 1:13 it seemed like the rain might be letting up enough to actually go out to my truck without getting totally soaked.

At 1:15 the rain stopped entirely.

By about 1:30 it was completely sunny with a few fluffy white clouds, seventy degrees, with a cool, gentle post-shower breeze.

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We had a fantastic time at the Botanical Gardens.  It really was awesome — with all kinds of spring flowers in bloom.  And we had a very fun time together.  And it wasn’t hard for me to get the point of this story (you might say it was like a blinding ray of light):  When you (I said to myself) are sitting there wrinnging your hands and saying Oh no, oh no, this is going to be bad, stop worrying!  The very outcome you have been hoping for might be just about to explode into being — even when NO signs suggest it could even be possible.  That’s the way Spirit works, that’s the way miracles work.

And I don’t want to take away the message that I am always going to get exactly what I want, that things will always turn out exactly like I plan them, regardless of the weather at any given moment.  It’s more that — I’m to be reassured that things will be all right.  That something even better than I can imagine is coming.  And that worrying about what the future’s going to bring in the way of badness is not only unhelpful — it’s frequently irrelevant. 

So — yeah.  You can call me on this.  Cause I don’t have it down yet.

Peace to all,

H.S.

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by

Disruption

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post.  I had planned a whole 3-part series of posts about the meanings of Easter,  putting together and balancing the interpretations I heard in the Baptist church and at the Sufi dances, and exploring the meanings of Easter for my own life.  Well, those posts (along with any other writing projects I had going two weeks ago) never got written, due to an interruption of life.  But my original vision was for this blog to be more about the day-to-day spiritual journey and less about abstract theorizing, so I’ll write about my process as I live it — messy as it is, petty as it no doubt will sometimes seem.  This blog is designed to be a place where I can sort things out as they happen.

The interruption — or perhaps irruption is a better word — of life is that my partner was fired from his job as a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.  Surprising and emotionally devastating to my partner, this would be disruptive enough to our life together, but it’s much bigger than that… As I mentioned, my partner is transgender (specifically, female-to-male transsexual) and numerous aspects of the review and termination process he went through made it evident that discrimination was taking place, whether intentional or not, and that he was negatively impacted by trans invisibility and lack of knowledge about trans issues (transgender studies being also the field in which he’s beginning to pursue research).  First a student and community letter-writing campaign, and now an international protest by trans, queer, and allied scholars and academics emerged to protest his firing.  It has become a full-time campaign.

I mention all this by way of update — I’ve written elsewhere about my opinions on all of this and the reasons I believe it’s a trans issue (and a gender issue generally) — and the reasons are many.  But this blog is not a place where I want to bring those arguments and discussions — though I’ll probably talk about them in relation to my own values and passionate commitments.  Instead I really want to use this space to talk about marriage, partnership, disruptive life events, and the ways these trigger my emotional processes (for the purposes of healing, I have to have faith) and the ways I’m dealing with the emotional and practical upheaval.  In other words, how it all affects me and what I’m doing to cope and, in my better moments (sometimes woefully few) to flow. 

Selfish?  Perhaps.  Self-indulgent?  I hope not.  I want to share my experience honestly — not whining, but illuminating the ways we humans are interconnected (especially in our intimate relationships) and events that supposedly “happen to” one person touch off or initiate processes in others around them — processes which are both related and independent, another seeming paradox of our simultaneous oneness and uniqueness.

This is also not the same as saying that I am a victim of someone else’s actions or of circumstances beoynd my control that don’t even have me as a target.  None of this is meant to imply an abdication of personal power — my own responsibility for my own life.  Rather it’s to say that none of us is an island; that many seemingly unrelated events in our lives show up to further our own “individual” soul growth; and that the more we open up to intimacy (intermingling of energy flows) with any other beings, the more we complexify the array of influences on the winding course of our life path. 

This seems like a good time to introduce my partner by his very own pseudonym (of course, if you live in CoMo or are aware of this story then you know who my partner is — but it seems to be standard blog protocol).  He suggested “Frank” because, well, he doesn’t hold back when he has something to say.  (After he had written and submitted a book proposal for a memoir about his sex change, it occurred to him to ask me if I minded him telling all my business.  I said, Ha ha ha!  Wait until you read my blog.) 

I couldn’t really imagine calling him Frank on all occasions good and bad, though.  I think I’m going to call him Hawk instead.  I know he strongly identifies with birds of prey like hawks (and eagles) because of their high, soaring flight and their clear vision, and that the hawk is a special totem for him.  It seems to suit him as a pseudonym, simple and dignified.  Also it reminds me of Hawkeye from M*A*S*H — not really that much like my partner in personality, but I always had a big crush on him.  And like that Hawk, my partner can be very fun and silly.  And he stands up for his values, which are values of humanity and compassion, although his nontraditional methods are often not recognized by authority.  Okay, come to think of it, he iskinda like Hawkeye. … Hot! 

All right, on that note, I know this is already a very long post so I will bring it to a close.  There will be more to come on this topic.  Until next time,

Peace,

HS