Confidently Communicating our Humanity
Listening to our Inner Voices and a practice to make sense of divine/human
Last post, I shared with you that I was excited to share some practices that help intertwine the human and divine for the purpose of…well enjoying this life as much as humanly possible! I know I would want that for my kids, so I assume God does too. Here is the first one:)
Recently I have felt called to communicate my longings and my humanity with confident kindness. This is almost the exact phrase I utter to my preteen 5 million times a week, can you please try that again with confident kindness? It is the phrase I have settled on after going through multiple scenarios in my head, like, if I just tell her to ‘stop’ or ‘don’t talk that way to your brothers’, I fear she will go inside herself and never say what she wants. And if I just let her steamroll them and me constantly, well, not going to lie, she leans towards acting a little rude, and rude is not fun to be around…and so, we landed on can you please try that again with confident kindness? Like, you know, own it and also be kind. Kindness tastes better. As does speaking while knowing your self worth. I am totally open to other suggestions you may have! Please send them my way. Annnd in the meantime, this phrase feels like proof that sometimes fear and overthinking are not all that bad. All that to say, I like this phrase so much, I say it to myself.
What do I mean by communicating my humanity with confident kindness? Well, like sharing my feelings/needs without exploding or before I mumble crabby resentments under my breath/loud enough for kids and hubby in the next room to hear while I ever so kindly clean up a pee all over the floor from new puppy. I am the only one that ever does anything around here, kinda thing. Let me rewind for a minute. So, I often like to preach about living within our limits, and living from a place of honesty and alignment. However, recently I said who cares about limits, and got another puppy. Despite the inner screaming I heard the night before her arrival and everything in me saying, “no, please no! it’s too much!” Like I literally had a nightmare that left me sweating because I was utterly terrified to go through losing sleep again. I know many of you are like, but puppies are the best, and they are, but I despise being woken up from a deep slumber that much. And they are a lot of work. And I was finally getting my adrenals healed and healthy. Anyways, so basically this has been an interesting experiment and I brought this silly little conundrum to my latest spiritual direction session and explored, if we find God in our limits, in our center- if you will, what happens when we choose to live outside of them? Where is God then? (Living outside of our limits…think: doing more than I have emotional capacity for, doing anything without presence or without showing up in my essence etc.)
So if God meets me in my limits, what happens when I choose outside my limits? I asked spiritual director. We grounded ourselves, chose quiet, and I listened for what was showing up in my body. Any sensations in my physical body or images making themselves known in my mind's eye. After some prayerful time in quiet, I could sense there was a part of me sheepishly hanging out in my throat, the place where our voice often gets stuck. This part of me was raising her hand but felt congested and sort of hidden under tiredness. She doesn't want to share what she needs because she is trying to keep the peace. She desperately wants connection. She is doing this for me because she desperately wants connection and harmony. After working through my annoyance with her that she is still pulling these antics, I find an authentic way to thank her. To thank that part of me. Thank you for trying to preserve peace for me, I whisper. I see you and appreciate that longing. I see both the longing for harmony/peace and also wanting to help boost her up to speak her piece. I share this to the best of my ability with spiritual director. To which she replies,
What does God want you to take from this?
Immediately the words came to my surface, and I let myself speak them aloud without hesitation; held in humanity. I am held in my humanity. We are held in our humanity. God doesn’t expect us to be more than human. By intentional design we have been made human. Beings with limits, off days, struggles, a whole journey of figuring out our limits, pushing them at times and then re-settling into ourselves.
So I tell this to that part of myself, we are held in our humanity. We are okay. Hand in hand, we are going to bring our needs and wants together to the surface now. Our thoughts and needs don’t have to be well articulated to be good enough to share, we can just stumble through and trust grace to catch them. But in silence, I could feel her resisting. Ugh, do we always have to do this the slow and thoughtful way, self? I asked her why she was giving me so much push back. She said she didn’t want to be rejected. She didn’t want to express her needs only to be rejected. She was afraid that a possible rejection would make her feel smaller and incapable.
I hear that, I tell her. That makes a lot of sense, and I understand now why you have been hiding. I hear that you don't want to be rejected. But, you are not rejected because we are together. Hand in hand, God will hold us in our humanity.
Is there an invitation from God for you in this? Spiritual director says.
Yes, I know I feel invited to work on communicating my humanity proactively. By proactively, I mean you know like before the outlandish mumblings of swear words and negative nelly comments under my breath that would usually come after not getting quiet with myself and listening to her in the first place.
I want to be so in touch with you, my dear human, and be so in tune to your needs, that we can divinely communicate them in a way that feels in alignment with joy and out of respect for myself. So what does this actually look like? For me it looks like asking my littles to watch the puppy for 30 minutes so I can workout/shower/breathe before the demands of day hit me and tell them they don't get video games without doing so. Follow me for more solid parenting tips. I am also trying the words, ‘can someone else take her out next time?’, but the key is saying these words without angst and total annoyance. This probably sounds dumb and obvious, but I often do this weird thing where I first have to run around like a frantic person trying to do it all myself before I am reminded by my own crabby outburst, that Oh, I am tired, I want help, maybe I should simply request some teamwork. We can become so exhausted trying to keep the peace in our families that we forgo our own (which really of course is not peace at all). So I figure, well that’s kind of silly and makes zero sense. Wouldn’t it be more fun to get quiet and listen to my needs, and then speak them? Maybe even speak them with joy? (*But wait! I wonder, what happens when no one has anything else to give? When none of us have margin? Well, then maybe it’s time to let something go. It is either that, or find somewhere along the way we let pieces of ourselves go.)
I know my humanity has brewed too long under my skin if I begin to sense resentment. Heck, maybe even before that, what comes before resentment? Usually fatigue for me. My body will communicate with shakiness, or feeling overly tired. So this is me nestling into my skin and listening for ways to find ease in my being and in the way I relate to the ones I love. It’s a little hilarious to me how something so seemingly small can actually make a big difference over time. However, although seemingly small, I get the sense that these small words over time, if left unspoken, would turn to a gut full of resentment. And that is certainly not what I want my gut filled with. So let’s speak our humanity aloud and have fun fumbling through it. Fumbling through the human experience that is ever so spiritual.
Do you make time to listen to your inner voices? The voices that help you show up authentically and honestly in your relationships and current circumstances. The ones that help you manifest your fullest purpose and potential into the world. The ones that help you live within your limits, and help you find your way back into yourself when you have scurried too far outside of your body you no longer reside there. What are those voices calling to you to speak aloud? (I want rest. I want to be seen. I want to share my voice or do that hard thing. I want to play! I need a nap. Sorry, I could just hear them whispering from all the way over here.) What is God’s invitation to you as you listen to them? (You are loved regardless of your output. You are created for joy. You are stunning, capable, and quite hilarious I might add.)
You are deeply loved, divinely created and have a fierce voice worth listening to! I hope that together we can confidently communicate our humanity, with some kindness of course because Jesus loves us and we are awesome, and I hope we can have some silly fun whilst doing so. (Like I just totally had some fun there while using the word whilst- I am not even entirely sure it can be used in that sentence, and honestly only about 98% sure it’s a word, sometimes words just sound so fancy that I’m not sure they are real…also I question myself around words ever since my professor questioned my use of ‘thence’ in a college paper circa early 2000s. Anyways, back to whilst. I mean it’s a fun word, whilst also being slightly annoying.) Point being, I hope you feel showered with clarity of mind and feel confident in communicating your needs this week. May we give and receive in beautiful balance, and when this becomes out of balance, because well it’s life and we are human and stuff gets messy, may we feel confident to make space for kind-joyful-hilarious even, confident communication.
Shine on, beautiful souls!
(By giving and receiving in balance I don’t mean you do something for me- I do something for you kinda balance- although there is a time and place for that as well, but when we think about the life of Jesus, he was so intentional about his time and energy. His time with friends, and time talking with His Father and time resting. (I mean, He slept through storm threatening to sink his boat Mark 4:35-41) So this makes me wonder, are we receiving God’s healing in order to show up for the healing of others? Are we soaking up God’s presence in order to continue to give? Sometimes this comes through God’s people, sometimes presence, or nature or quiet or solitude…How do you receive God’s love and presence?)
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another (yourself included), forgiving each other (yourself included), just as Christ God forgave you.” Ephesians 4: 29-32 I added the yourselves included. It felt implied given the as Christ forgave you, ya know? so much love to you!
P.S. Update: I adore my puppy now. She is sassy and fierce, and delivers a boss flavored energy that I like to try my best to emulate every day. Her name is Charleigh June, but she responds best to Cha Cha, and she is my most recent reminder of God’s grace and mercy.
p.p.s I’d love to hear if you have any surprise gifts of mercy or grace in your life…?