“…just as darkness is nothing but the absence of light, so fear is nothing but the absence of love.” Marianne Williamson
Alena had been divorced over a year. Everyone told her the first year is the hardest, so why hadn’t the pain of losing her 24 year marriage dissipated by now?
Their marriage wasn’t good. He was verbally and emotionally abusive to her throughout the last 10 years.
And although intellectually she knows she’s better off now without that abuse, she can’t seem to make her heart understand. She misses him, misses having a partner in her life and wonders how she’s going to be able to move forward in her life without him. After all, she’s spent more of her life with him than without him.
She likened the relationship to a drug – she knows it wasn’t good for her, but she still can’t seem to turn away from it.
And she’s not alone.
We can know something in our minds, but that message sometimes doesn’t make its way to our hearts.
And that keeps us stuck in pain.
Until you can actually distinguish the voice that’s speaking…..
The mind says, Get over it….suppress the pain…suck it up and move on.
The heart says, What you resist will only persist; be gentle with me.
The mind will tell you that you can learn to live without love.
The heart will tell you, To love and to be loved is the only reason you’re here.
The mind will tell you, Hide your heart…if exposed, it will only get hurt.
The heart will tell you to love with abandon – honestly and fiercely.
The mind will tell you, You can’t trust him; you can’t even trust yourself.
The heart will tell you, I’m always guiding you and I will not lead you astray.
The mind will tell you, If he would just <fill in the blank>, then I would be happy.
The heart will tell you, Please don’t delegate your happiness to someone else. It’s not his responsibility to make you happy; it’s yours.
Sometimes our heads can’t make our hearts understand. And maybe when there’s that gap, there’s a message or a lesson we’re supposed to learn.
In Alena’s case, she might say, “But my heart still loves him even though he hurt me again and again. That can’t be good.”
Go deeper……listen more closely…..
I would argue that Alena’s heart is whispering to her, “If you loved me more, if you saw how precious and worthy this heart is, you would never allow someone to treat it like that.”
We should stop and listen to our hearts more often.
