Hallelujah

Peace is now my default feeling. When I am confronted with something unexpectedly abrasive, I excuse myself to take the peace that has been pushed aside and bring it back into my center. My center, where Jesus dwells. My heart center, filled to the brim and pouring over the sides with complicated simplicity. Love and respect for my God and all of his creation, including myself. Last night, my peaceful state of mind was hit with a condescending comment that resulted in my playful but deliberate disrespect of unspoken rules in a bar lounge that took itself very seriously. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, envisioning myself meditating in the stall, but remembered that there was greater life outside of this dark bar and stepped out into the streets of San Francisco. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply. Walk a few steps. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply. Still feeling weird. My therapist translated my way of speaking into terminology that helps him, and ultimately helps me. When I say I am feeling weird, I am feeling anxious. When I say I am feeling gross, I am feeling guilty. Last night, I was feeling weird. There were some steps to an apartment to my left, they looked comforting. Removed from the street, back facing to the bar entrance, under a dim light for a sense of safety. Safety. So many things that seem to be concrete could easily be revealed to be created in our minds. Are we ever safe? Safety is something we manifest, a feeling that we absorb from whatever is around us. You see many police cars. Do you feel safe, knowing they are around? Or do you feel unsafe, knowing your environment has created a need for them? There were no police cars last night. Just my forced breathing, those metal steps, and a woman a little ways down, leaning against the wall as if it was all she had. I closed my eyes, focused on Jesus, said a prayer, repeated his name. When I opened my eyes, I realized the woman was crying. When people cry, my heart cries out to my brain to my legs to my arms to love them. Sometimes I do. Most times, I ignore my heart, thinking it weird and I continue along, leaving our lives unaffected and my heart rejected. That need to love others, where does that come from? When I am feeling self critical I attribute it to my want to be wanted, my selfish love. I love others because I love that they need me, that they want me and my love. I love others because I love myself. When I am feeling Jesus' presence in every single part of my body and mind and soul and heart, I say that I love others because Jesus would. I love others and I reach out because I have arms that are not afraid to hug tightly and I have legs that aren't afraid to approach the unknown and I have a heart that is connected to my mind to my mouth in a way that allows me to truly convey how I feel. I have a heart that feels genuine empathy, I have a mind that can process what others need. These are blessings, but become burdens without faith in myself through my faith in God and myself as his creation. It is much easier for me to have faith in myself when the faith in God comes first. Prayer helps me to realize that I have always had the gifts that I am asking God to give me, that I have access to unlimited potential when my eyes are set on him. Last night, with my eyes set on God, my eyes were also set on his daughter, broken and bruised and in need of something to lean on that was made by God, not man. That wall can not support her. That wall leaves her lonely, leaves her cold, leaves her unnaffected. Human support, that can work wonders. I walked over to her, asked her if she needed a friend or maybe a hug. She needed both. She didn't want either, that's how I know that it was a need. She wasn't waiting for me, she was waiting for an escape out of that scene. Instead she got an invitation into the same scene but a different act, an act of love, an act of acceptance, an act of God. What a gift. To embrace who we are, to embrace what we have, to embrace what we can do. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Tania. Thank you to my courage, my boldness, my heart, my mind, my arms, my humor, my presence, my sense of peace. When I am peaceful, I am with Jesus. When I am with Jesus, I am peaceful. When I am these things, I am in tune with those who are truly in need. I am in tune with what I can give those in need. I am in tune. I am singing Hallelujah, and I am in tune.