Love And Fear

1 John 4: 18-19  There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear because fear hath punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because He first loved us.

The picture above depicts perfectly my life over the last two and a half years, love trapped in fear.  My spiritual journey has been a long process that started back in 2004 when I met Madelyn.  But in August of 2011 I walked outside with my one year-old son in my arms and I looked up at the sky.  I felt lonelier than I ever had in my life.  I was weary, hopes crushed, dreams dashed upon the rocks of life.  "Please God, please change my life by the time I'm forty!" is what I implored of God as I raised my {I'm sure} red-rimmed eyes to the heavens.  I didn't think God was listening, not truly, but oh was I wrong.  Oh man was I wrong!

Immediately my life began to change.  "Change" is a gentle word to describe what happened to my life.  More like it spun off into a tail spin that has only recently calmed.  My story will take several blog posts, and I plan to share it with you because it is my soul quest to do so.  I have learned so so much since then, much of it unconventional and hard to accept and believe.  I've been pushed and prodded to open my heart and knock down my walls so I could believe; it is only when I believe that I can teach what I've learned, and I am sure now, at forty years old, it is time for me to share my lessons.

Sharing this process I've experienced won't be easy.  I've dealt with fear so deep and personal it can't really be expressed in words but I will try.  I will have to touch on my past which is a sensitive subject for me.  Some dragons need to be kept sleeping, some secrets do not need to be uncovered.  But I do have a history, and it is mine.  I lived it, and I have a truth that is all my own.  I deserve to share my truth.  There is no point in my recounting sordid experiences to shock or induce pity; pity is the last thing I desire.  But I know there are others out there who have walked the same path as me, and those people are struggling like I have and I want them to know there is light in the darkness even if it seems so dim to be hardly evident.  But it is there.  Believe me the light is there, and God is the one holding the lantern.  It is not my goal to recount incidents of my life that will hurt or harm the living.  I am here only to love and teach, not cause humiliation or pain. At the same time my youth was difficult and parts of it will have to be discussed.  Honestly the "whats" about my past are not important; the "whys" are where the testimony is held.  It is tiring to hear someone detail "war stories" of a bleak childhood in a "My story is worse than yours" attitude.  There is harm is regurgitating old painful experiences because the mind becomes convinced the situations have happened over again; there is danger in the stereotypical image of a patient stretched out on a couch hearing the words, "So tell me about your childhood."  There is also such a thing as shattering privacy.  We will be doing none of that here.

What I am here to say is I believe in soul, strongly in soul.  I believe our journeys are chosen before we come to earth and *we* choose them ourselves.  I believe in reincarnation.  I also believe in heaven but my belief is much different than what is taught in church.  I have experienced meeting people who have helped save my life with a few kind words or an embrace... and I know those people are soul mates.  I believe I have a large soul family, and I know soul speaks to me always, and through many people.  Lessons are around every corner.  As it pertains to my past I feel I chose to enter into a life where lessons were to be taught at every angle.  I was to learn how to endure and triumph over pain and fear, and others around me had to learn the same.  Life is one big lesson, and the strong learn from the lessons and go on to teach others so they too can survive and heal.  

My childhood was not an easy one.  There was a lot of love but also a decent amount of fear.  The term "Walking on eggshells" is a perfect way to describe how I felt at home.  I loved and still love my parents very much.  Wounded hearts go on to wound because they know no different.  Generational abuse is very real; pain is passed down from generation to generation until somewhere in there the brakes are thrown.  I am thankful to God that the pain stops at our generation, and that is only due to His grace.  My parents are very strong people who have fought their own personal demons, and boy how did they fight.  Kudos to them because when many couples would have thrown in the towel, broken up, become more dysfunctional and sunk down into the gallows of despair they did the opposite.  They worked hard together to heal and recover from their struggles and they did this together.  My parents have been married for over forty years. They are loving parents and grandparents and I feel very blessed to have them in my life.             

My experiences have shown me that life is a process, and it's a complicated experience.  I feel as a soul I chose to come to earth to learn how to become a strong fearless woman.  I am fairly sure my lessons in this lifetime concern FEAR, DOUBT and BELIEF.  I have no problem at all loving people.  I am extremely forgiving, empathetic and loving.  I couldn't hold resentment in a bucket if I tried.  I am far from perfect and I get angry but I'm over in soon, and the older I get the less I anger.  But fear has been my number one nemesis in this life, and writing this blog is a step in the process of healing completely from my fears.

I have been nervous to speak my truth.  Afraid to put my "real self" out here.  The self who has direct communication with soul and experiences some really, er, different stuff.  I have strong spiritual guidance that I channel, and even now I am surprised albeit blessed by how easily I channel Spirit.  I really don't know what else to call "it."  Some say spirit guides.  Angels.  Ascended Masters.  Jesus.  God.  Dragons, fairies, earth, air or water spirits and even animals.  I've had spirit guides in my life, and angels.  But now I call my guidance Spirit and think of it as a divine energy that guides me, and often I am pretty sure I am guided by my soul.  I, me as a human, can be very dense.  Thick as a brick wall.  Luckily God blesses me with a constant connection to Spirit so I can hear the workings of my soul.  Without my spiritual GPS system I may have been lost ages ago... but despite my deep layers of fear and doubt God has never let me go.

I am writing this blog now, rambling right this moment, to describe my experiences with God.  I want to tell people who God is to me, "The Divine."  I have learned and been shown first hand how the divine guides us.  Strongly is the perfect word to describe how the divine guides us.  The divine has workings in our lives at all moments but often ego and fear overshadow the workings of Spirit.  I use God, Spirit and Soul interchangeably because I feel they are all part of a whole Universal Creation Energy, an energy we are all part of.  God is me and you.  We are God.  God is an energy and that is Love.  God is love.  Fear is separation from God.  

I had a small but huge eye-opening experience happen to me a few nights ago.  Battling my fears has taken a good part of two and a half years, and at times I was not sure I would survive.  The Dark Night of The Soul is true and can be an emotional pain worse than anything imaginable.  I have found myself on my knees keening, an unholy animalistic sound coming from me as I'm rendered totally defenseless.  Sounds have come from me that I don't even recognize as human as I've prayed to God to not let me go through my pain and darkness- it's a purging process.  Spiritual and very real although many people do not understand it. This process has hit me very hard these last two months.  There was a catalyst to this which I feel is some of my final hardcore purging of my major fears.  Throughout this process I've learned that while I know, and I've been shown, I still did not BELIEVE in God's grace.  I did not have faith in Him.  I could not surrender my life to the divine no matter how many signs or messages I was given.  

Christmas was hard for me.  I am missing someone very much, and the missing has been a part of my healing process {a story for another post.}  This missing has brought out every one of my deepest fears concerning abandonment and not being loveable, about being forgettable and easily disposed of.  Soul has taught me some very interesting, deep and hard to accept truths about spiritual healing.  Much of the information I have been given has illicited further doubt and fear in me because I just could not belive.  Refused.  Signs abound, really strong signs like radio stations switching to play a poignant song with a specific message for me.  I've received reminder messages on my iPhone that were honest to God put there by the divine.  Computer issues, songs, dreams, words other people speak to me that I know are coming straight from soul telling me TO BELIEVE.  To give up fear and just believe.  But I refused, and I'll tell ya I learned a lot about what happens when we cling to fear, and it ain't fun.  Spirit can and will make our fears come true so we can battle them, and watch out when that happens because it can feel like life as you know it is coming to an end.  The missing I speak of was created due to my strong old fears about myself; I literally very quietly pushed someone away from me due to fear- and it was all soul-inspired.  Soul orchestrated.  As it is explained to me, and will be explained deeper in a future post, burdens can be soul-orchestrated.  So can suffering.  It's like this- you know those sayings like, "What you think about most you attract to you?"  Yeah well heed those words because they are truer than true.  If you want something bad enough, and if that is pain and fear, then soul WILL give those things to you so you can feel the pain so strongly that you choose to let go.

Been there.  Done that.  Got the t-shirt.  It is very very true.  Spirit wants us to soar and dream and love.  But when people like me, people who fear belief like it's the hairy drooling monster in the closet, insist on clinging to fear even when I longed for love- I got fear.  I got love too.  Oh did I get love!  But fear followed, and it sucked.  Badly.

A few nights ago I was cuddling with my little dream come true, my now four year-old son PJ.  My heart had been broken to bits and I've been struggling with fear, pain and disbelief.  I forgot to trust God.  I've never fully trusted God, goes back to my childhood and how I did not feel I could trust those who were supposed to love and take care of me- very hard association to break.  I do have strong contact with Spirit, and I try to listen but when it comes to my own personal hopes and dreams I freak out.  I don't trust.  I run from faith, hope and love as it pertains to me.  Mixed in lately with my messages is the word "jingle."  I had no idea why.  Jingle.  Hm.  I already know when I get messages I don't completely understand to simply wait and it will be made clear to me.

My son and I curled up on the couch and I said, "Hey buddy how about watching The Polar Express?"  As the movie began I grew increasingly uncomfortable as I realized I was lead to watch that particular movie that night.  The boy in the movie is a total skeptic.  A non-believer, and oh he wants to believe so badly!  he longs to believe.  He almost does not get on the train but his soul spoke to him at the last minute and he hopped on for the ride.  At one point he's told, "You're a doubter!  You're a doubter!  You don't believe!"  I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Spirit was talking to me as I watched this doubtful little boy ache for belief.  It was soon time to put my little man to bed so I watched the remainder of the movie by myself.

And I sobbed.  Jingle.  The boy could not hear sleigh bells ring because of his doubt.  Only at the end of the movie once he finally sees Santa can he hear the bells jingle.  He asks Santa for a bell as his gift, and then he loses it.  He finds it under the tree Christmas morning.  At the end of the movie he says that over the years all the adults lose the ability to hear the jingle of the bell, all adults except for him because he always believed.

After I watched this movie I lay in bed deeply praying.  Soul has been speaking to me about my faith lately, rather my lack of faith.  I have been hurting and I am almost in too much pain to seek refuge in God.  I do not trust.  I am afraid of disappointment.  I have a severe lack of hope.  So I spoke to God.  I cried out to him actually, begged him.  I said, "I do believe.  I do."  "I believe."  I asked for a sign that what Spirit has been teaching me could possibly be true.  I asked for proof, just like the bell the little boy received.

As I said "I believe" I felt a strong energy behind my eyes.  There was a twitching, lights behind my eyelids.  In the morning I thought maybe I had been dreaming {doubter here!}  I woke and thought about the lights behind my eyes.  And as I started my morning I found my sign.  A HUGE clear glaring sign that cannot be explained away as coincidence or happenstance or accident.  I received an email from this person I've been missing, and this is after over a month of silence- a silence Spirit tells me is not an accident.  It is a silence to show me a process of healing fear.  I know it sounds very unbelievable but Spirit can and will use very close soul connections as "channels" to teach us lessons.  God uses us as instruments of His peace and healing, and sometimes for some of us stubborn ones the healing comes from being hit with huge doses of pain and fear until we finally cave and face off those fears, overcoming them.  We can make change happen, and it may be change we do not like at all if it is inspired by fear.  Soul will use fear to teach us, and in very unconventional ways.  But that morning I received my jingle bell.  

I asked God to please give me hope.  To please please please SHOW ME.  Give me something to believe in.  Ensure I can trust and hope and have faith in this strange process I've been going through, and the response was undeniable.  Not only was I happy to hear from this person- it was way way more than the contact.  It was the fact that I said, "I believe" and was given something to believe in.  The message came through not long after I feel asleep, and the tone and content showed me what I needed to know.  God blessed me with proof so I can, in fact, surrender all of my fears to Him.  And I am.

God gave me my "jingle."  

And I am starting here because I know that there are many others out there who feel alone even when they know they are not.  There is a big difference between knowing and believing.  Sometimes we need a boost.  A unmistakable sign or message.  It is all about belief, intention, trust, hope and love.  Spirit wants us to believe and dream.  I have much more to share, and hopefully it will help someone out there find light in the darkness.  

I can't begin to express to you how important it is to hold on to your dreams and not ruin them with fear.  Fear is dark and insidious and will convince you of anything.  It inspires paranoia.  Fear very nearly took over my life, trying to separate me from God, from Love, but He kept me close and pushed me to believe.

Love only.  No fear.

~Jennifer 

          

Love Versus Attachment

Love is a profoundly deep feeling of intense affection for someone or something. It is high and light and wonderfully of God; love truly does make the world go 'round.  Love is the electricity that illuminates the universe. Love inspires us to write and sing and dance and create and *squeeeee* when we see the perfection of a newborn baby or when we catch a glimpse of our favorite person or hear a snippet of a beloved song.  Love is bliss.  Love is Rapture. There should be no pain in love. Or anxiety. And absolutely no fear. Sounds like a difficult state to achieve doesn't it? Impossible even.  Well it isn't impossible to experience love with no fear or attachment although it takes some intense inner work and will always be a journey to reach a goal instead of a ending up at the destination. Many people experience attachment to others instead of love for them. We have ALL been there because we are human.  When you feel "love" for another person that also involves low-energy emotions like: fear, anxiety, depression, anger, sadness or suffering this is not a high-energy love. It is attachment.

According to psychologist Mary Ainsworth, "Attachment is not just a connection between two people; it is a bond that involves a desire for regular contact with that person and the experience of distress during separation from that person." Now this is fine and dandy between an infant and her mother but attachment is not healthy in a romantic relationship {the word "distress" here should stick out to you like a turd in a punchbowl.}  A barnacle attaches to the bottom of a ship and later has to be violently scraped off by the crew. Lamprey eels attach to the flesh of other fish to suck their blood- that is "attachment." Not love.

So think about it... you see attachment all the time, all around you in real life and in the media.  Rarely is "true love," unconditional love, portrayed correctly in the media.  Love songs are mostly about sick attachment, and I apologize if I am raining on your romantic parade {I now feel like posting a link to "Singing in The Rain!} Bruno Mars' song "Grenade?"  Reeks of attachment.  He gave her all he had and she decided she no longer wanted him in her life but he'd still catch a grenade for her or take a bullet straight through his brain for her, endure a ton of pain for her.  That is not love- it is sickness.  

A couple "falls in love" and after the initial honeymoon phase of spending every imaginable moment together being connected at the hip {and other places maybe heh heh heh} is over then low-energy emotions being to creep in when one partner may want to ease back into having a little bit of personal space.  Jealousy, a total low-energy fear-based emotion, is a classic reaction when this happens.  Then Facebook stalking begins, the distrust grows.  Silly ego-based worries crop up that allow our self-esteem to plummet when it is imagined that our partner may be out looking for a new love instead of say maybe... being home practicing his guitar or maybe even swilling a few beers with his buddies while giving high fives and smack talking.  We are not experiencing "love" for that person when we desire to be with them every waking moment but instead attachment.  Do not let love turned attachment fall even deeper into an addiction for another person because then You. Are. Screwed.  Only pain will lie ahead for you as you suffer the eventual train wreck of breakup and withdraw, just like coming off the high of any other drug of choice. 

Love would be wanting to give your mate space to breathe and grow and be his own person.  Love would be loving *yourself* enough to desire the same thing for YOU.  Do not lose yourself in a relationship.  Be more aware than most.  Do not attach yourself to your "love" like a lamprey eel, sucking out the lifeblood in a fruitless effort to feel better about yourself through the constant attention of another.  That is distress and desperation, so so far from love.  You do not need someone else to fill you because you are complete on your own.

Love yourself first.  When you do you will not need to seek affirmation through the eyes of another. No, really.  I know it sounds cliche' but honest-to-God cross my heart it really must happen first that you love yourself before you can be content with another and he content with you.  And I do mean blissfully in love with yourself... look in the mirror and give yourself a "Come here often?" cheeky smile of adoration and admiration for all you've achieved in life, and all you've managed to overcome through mistakes, pain and suffering as well. Learn this loving yourself because I guarantee if you don't then The Universe, God, All That Is- will eventually force you to do so.  And at times it ain't a fun lesson.  Read up on learning to love yourself and connecting to your Higher Self.  Learn about your chakras and where they might be blocked and all that inner stuff no one ever really wants to take the time to do, like yoga and prayer and meditation, but that completely heals and awaken us.   

In the end when you have a better more concrete idea of what true unconditional love really is, a love where you can let someone go when you know it is in his or her or your higher good to do so even though letting go may be heartbreaking, you will know true emotional freedom.   Then the awful digging-into-your-flesh ties that bind you, attach you, to seeking affirmation of love outside of your own heart will forever be broken.  Always remember when a person you love has come and gone from your life it takes a strong individual to allow that love to forever reside in the heart while letting go of the attachment; this ability to let go is true unconditional love- the love that God has for us and desires us to have for others.

How strong are you?