New beginnings

Lately, I've been thinking about the early days of deconstructing a faith and religious path that no longer fit. The moments when I knew that my body could no longer trod quietly along the narrow, winding path toward a center so far apart from Source. Those days loosely remind me of how, at 38, a surgery released my flesh and bones from the daily work of shimmying into structures too tight for my belly and breath.

I wonder if every new beginning begins with discomfort.

A longing for ease.

Recently, I shut down some of my social media accounts. I am no longer writing on Threads. I closed a Substack account that amassed countless persons who have heard me talk about my motherhood experiences, my desire to see radical love prevail, my journey in knowing cancer and chronic illness. Trauma and loss and grief. My attention lingers on the movements in front of me this year. Sitting on the floor at 10 pm on a Monday night as my son packs for a trip. Thrift store visits with my daughter - during which we laugh. She laughs.

In April of this year, my daughter experienced a medical event that stirred up in me a quiet nod toward my lifelong choice to practice presence. And, over the last few years, to cultivate a different relationship with it. From my time in more fundamentalist and Christian spaces, I cannot remember a season in which I did not have a relationship with presence. With peace. With prayer - which was meant to usher in the peace that surpassed all understanding - and, sometimes it did. Yet, as I unraveled embedded theologies and the beliefs that augmented my path, I found that the "end point of prayer" was, perhaps, never meant to be peace... but instead, belief and action.

The week of her medical event, I was beginning a new job in ministry. I am not new to ministry. I've done my time in public-facing roles within churches, my home, and beyond it. This particular new job was different, though. The work ahead of me was (and continues to be) to remind people of who they are. In the movement I am a part of, we believe in innate wholeness, value, and worth. As a whole human, becoming more whole and experiencing humanity along the way, we believe that we have a say in our path. So, yes prayer. But also, yes action.

Right now, I am reconciling both the current wellness of my child and the vibrant spiritual life that I have c0-created and expanded into. When I deconstructed my beliefs about prayer - and unanswered prayer - just a few short years ago, I did not yet understand the responsibility of it. Of prayer. Prayer often felt like a loose end hanging in the wind. An end I was waiting for God, Cosmos, Universe, and my Creator to grab onto. But often, it didn't seem like she did. Today, I am experiencing the richness of a spiritual practice that does not let me forget that I am accountable for what I do beyond prayer.

I regret not a single prayer I have left on altars to a God I no longer believe in. And, I am deeply grateful for the clarity that I have received on how prayer actually works. Even when it seems as though it might not be working.

When my daughter landed inpatient at the hospital, and - when we received her formal diagnosis, my immediate response was to go back to all those unanswered prayers. I rifled through them for a day or two. Joined them in their box. Cried about how we actually did do it "right" - as if right is a thing. We prayed and we did the work. I have filled out more paperwork for one child than I ever believed possible. Sat with countless wise humans within and outside of the system. Year after year after year. Every single swipe of the pen has been worth it. Even when my hands ached.

What I have learned here thus far is that wellness, joy, whatever it is that we pray for, is not always birthed of a quiet patience on bruised knees, but often, I think, of a fierce love. I also believe that this fierce love can take us places the quiet patience never will. Into community with like hearts. Into service. Into a relationship with the perfect and right person, provider, friend. Into upleveled compassion. Back to Source.

There will never be a time in our lives when we are absolutely certain that prayers will be answered or be answered in the way that we desire most. And yet, we pray. We keep praying. We believe. We tune into our own divinity and the source of it - the Divine. We step toward and into our potential. We do the work.

As I began with in this post, I wonder if every new beginning begins with discomfort. A longing for ease.

But I also wonder if we have a choice in how we meet this discomfort. We can wade into it with our shoulders made heavy by expectations. Or, maybe, we can bow to it. See the discomfort itself as a teacher. Let it stretch us. Choose to bend.