A two post Monday

I know, I know.

But something happened to me last night that set me right back on my rear.

I spent a couple of hours of downtime folding laundry and checking my email last night, and while my messenger was on, I got a blip from my ex (the one I'm still friendly with). He's having some existential issues in his life, and his faith has deserted him. We talked for a long time, and shared some insights back and forth that really got me thinking.

He told me that he thought that God had been talking to me for a long time and that I hadn't been listening. That I had control issues. I know that's true. It's very important to me that I feel like I'm in control of my life. There have been times in my life that I wasn't in control, and they resulted in things happening to me that were very, very painful and as such, I'm a wee bit gun shy. It hurts my relationships as well, I know it does - this inability to trust. One of the very first priorities that B made was to take an inordinate length of time and patience to lead me out from 'beneath the bed' so to speak in our intimate life. It simply wasn't in my vocabulary, a man who could make his own pleasures meaningless in favor of mine. Slowly I learned to trust him, in our physical intimacy and in our emotional intimacy.

In many ways I am still learning. I still catch myself questioning his devotion sometimes. For so long I have assumed that I was alone that it has become a habit, one that's been hard to break. When I am fretting about a difficult task and how I'm going to accomplish it, and B breaks in to tell me he's got part of it covered, I still look at him dumbfounded. "Really? You would go out of your way for me??" It's not a ploy... not a fishing-session for approval. It's simply an honest expression of the skip in my record that I feel when I realize that yes, he loves me enough to put his pleasure second to mine. That I'm not alone in the world.

The hardest part for me is the surrender.

I have fought the world for so long that I don't know how not to. All I know is that the solace that I find in B is immense. I have no problems giving to this man.. he gives back in spades. It's ironic, really.... we have the same problems. When we made the first tentative attempts at this relationship we asked each other "What happens when two givers collide?" The answer, we have found, is that it's wonderful 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time someone finds it hard to receive, and the other gets hurt. How would you feel if your good intentions were rebuffed? The problem, it seems, is surrender.

Surrender sounds like such a bad word. But it isn't a synonym for loss. Instead, surrender is an opening up, a breaking down of the barriers that keep love out. Surrender flings the gates wide so the love our partner wants to give us can come flowing in, filling us up to the top with acceptance.. with peace.. with hope. But it's so HARD to do sometimes. Why do we find it so hard to surrender? Why does B hide away when he hurts, so that no one can see? Why do I have to chase him down to help ease his pain, when it so obviously helps? Why do I hold back sometimes when all B wants is to lift me up? Is it the shame of needing someone to do for us what we can't do for ourselves? Is it an admission of weakness?

I need you.

We are velcroed at the heart. There should not be this awkwardness between us. But it doesn't end there. It goes back, for me, back to the very beginning.

I laughed with my ex last night as I quipped "I always had trouble with those first three steps..." But I didn't realize then how true that was. Look at them. Replace "alcohol" with "life".

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

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Last night after we went to bed something happened that made it clear to me. We set the clocks back before we retired, but something woke B in the middle of the night and he thought it was time to get up. I was restless anyway, and when he woke up, I got up like a good little girl and went to make coffee, thinking it was 5 a.m. When I came back for our snuggle time (the ten minutes before the snooze rings - the most precious time of the day!), he was laughing. "Did you start the pot?" he asked. "It's only 1 a.m.!"

We were both really awake, so he went out for a cigarette and I decided to take something to help me get back to sleep. I found some valerian caps that I'd used in the past, and took one. Now, valerian is one of the safest things out there, and I've taken it a hundred times, but this time was very different. By the time B came back to bed, I was having hallucinations, ataxia, and the weirdest sensation that my brain was prickling. It was extremely frightening. He got up and stayed up with me, watching me stagger around the house, fighting the drug. Every couple of minutes it would hit me like a wave: the somnolence, the weird visual tracers behind my eyes, my ears ringing. And I'd fight it back, struggling desperately to stay awake... take back control of my brain. He sat with me and talked to me until the worst of it passed, the better part of an hour.

Finally, we went back to bed. At last it dawned on me that what I'd been doing was fighting the normal actions of the drug. That when I'd taken it before, I'd gone directly to sleep in the beginning, letting it carry me off into slumber like it was supposed to, without the fight. And when it finally got through to me, there, in the safety of B's arms I let my body go. And when the next wave came through, I took a deep breath and surrendered, letting it carry me out to sea, out where I fell into a deep and restful slumber, as it had meant to all along.

How many things have I missed out on because I've been fighting, refusing the surrender?

I haven't trusted God to control my life. I've been fighting Him for nearly forty years now. I'm tired. I think He's telling me something. What peace, what riches await me when I consent to surrender?

I'm learning.