Forgiveness

 

I have always viewed my depression and my food addiction as not just physical and chemical.  There is a much-overlooked mental side to both, that when ignored perpetuates the cycle.  Until and unless we confront the core and heart of what feeds our weakness and addictions, we can’t fully recover from them and move forward. 

Too often for me the approach to surface level fixes were simply pills or behavioral modifications like not having cake in my house. But that only deals with what we falsely see as the issue and not what is underneath that feeds the addiction insatiably in a way that even cake would not satisfy.

Don’t get me wrong, cake is definitely a problem but removing it is merely a temporary band aid on a much deeper wound.  If you aren’t able to dig down and confront your mental issues, you will always be removing cake and never healing what is underneath your desire for cake. And the bad news is that cake is all around you. When you are a food addict you will never escape it.  You can clear your house of it but at some point, you need to live in the real world where there are parties and restaurants and, well, life.  You will never completely control what is around you, so you need to be aware of what is inside you that is driving the desire for excess.  

I have always focused on the mental aspect of my journey.  It was hands down the key to my success when I lost the 100 pounds originally.  It was long hours of me writing about my pain and my past, journaling it out of inside me and onto a page where I could examine it in the daylight.  I did not attempt to climb over the mountain on its pristine flank admiring the views.  Instead, I took a dirty exhausting path directly through it, into the heart of it. 

No matter how difficult those things were to process I managed them with a lot of tears, self-exploration and honesty. And when I stopped, so did my weight loss.  There was something I was not willing to deal with, not willing to let my mind go to no matter how hard I tried.  And that unwillingness to finish the journey I had started is what has cost me the last few years.  It allowed me to pack back on the pounds on top of the baggage I was refusing to let go of.

There is no other way for me but to go back there and wade through the things I was unwilling or unable to then.  If I can conquer the mental side of this, the physical will fall into line.  It is not just about what I am eating.  It is about what has been eating me. 

But I have already written chapters about my pain, my childhood, my failings.  What am I missing?  What am I am refusing to deal with? I languish in those thoughts daily.  I am lost and stagnant. Without path or purpose.

Then, a few days ago, I remembered the angels.

Some of you might think this is all hooey but I’m fixing to tell you the story anyway. Years ago, Jym and I lost a dear friend.  He died unexpectedly and senselessly.  Although we both managed that grief both together and separately, we had very different ways of moving through that process. 

I eventually decided to see a clairvoyant, someone who can see and speak to the dead.  I didn’t know what to expect but she had quite a resume.  I went to her open to whatever she could provide that would give me some sort of clarity and healing.

I did not tell her about the death and in fact did no speaking.  I shook her hand and sat across from her at the table in her kitchen. I was slightly skeptical yet somehow hopeful. I just sat and listened. I had nothing to lose. She talked about a lot of things in the session but had not touched on our friend.  I was wondering how to navigate that when she came to a part of our one-sided conversation that was unexpected and took me by surprise.

“Most people I see have one maybe 2 angels around them. That’s normal.  Everyone has an angel. Small angels that guide us through life. But you are different. Behind you I see many angels.” She scanned the ceiling line with her eyes above my head.  “These are not normal angels.  They are very big, powerful. The biggest I have ever seen. Any many.” She glanced again directly above my head, paused, smiled, then looked back into my eyes. “You have a very special purpose here on this earth. A large and important purpose.” She paused, her eyes scanning the room again, as if listening to someone I could not hear. Then a look of clarity. “You know what it is. You have always known. Follow your instincts.” She paused again and nodded toward the ceiling. “They will not allow you to fail at this.”

Well sweet baby Jesus, what the hell did that all mean?  I came there for healing about our friend’s death and now was all blindsided by some higher purpose and big angels. I was so shocked by what she said that I couldn’t let it sink in at that moment and my session was almost over. I think I was more panicked that I had not yet gotten what I thought I had come there for and now my brain was swimming with how badly I was blundering and letting down an entire army of angels.

She asked me if I had any questions for her.  Hell yes I have questions.  Like a LOT of questions.  But the clock was ticking and my mind was racing so I opened my mouth and I asked her simply, “Do the dead just speak to you? Or do you have to call for them by name?” She paused.  “You are talking about a young man.  He was your husband’s friend, but he loved you as well. He was very young when he passed.  He is here.  He has been the whole time, but he is quiet and shy.  In the corner, behind me, patient, not wanting to interrupt. I sense a great pain in his heart. He wants me to tell you that he is walking with your husband now, by the water.”

Although the water part meant nothing to me especially since my husband was supposed to be waiting for me outside on the street, the fact that she knew without my leading that it was a male friend of my husband’s (I mean seriously how many women would come for a reading about their husband’s friend?) but her description of him was on point.  It was so accurate that I was certain she spoke to him and that his spirit was ok.  I was sobbing so much I could barely thank her.  But the deal clincher was what happened after I left her home. 

When I exited the house, Jym was not around so I texted him and he picked me up a short time later. I was clearly unable to speak still sobbing into a now soggy mass of Kleenex.  So he decided to tell me what he was doing while I was in my reading.  “I took a drive around the town and I found this cute little church and I was wandering around it and found this hidden pond behind it.  I just spent most of the time there walking around the water’s edge. I guess I lost track of time.  That is where I was when you texted me.” I paused my sobbing only for a moment to gasp and reply, “Johnny was with you.  He was walking with you by the water. She told me.” I could barely get the words out. There is no way she could have known that.  I didn’t know that.

From that moment on there was no doubt in what I had experienced.  Any part of me that doubted was no longer in doubt. But if she saw Johnny so clearly then maybe the big angel thing wasn’t all hocus pocus either.  I carried that all with me for years.  Never really knowing what to do with it.  Is my purpose buried underneath all this muck and confusion?  How am I ever going to find it? And how the hell am I going to pursue some grand purpose when I can’t even get my collective shit together in even one aspect of my life? I mean what celestial being would choose ME and my hot mess goat rodeo to be some bringer of a higher purpose? Seriously.

A few days ago I was thinking about these angels. If they are guiding me, I am missing it, blind to it. Maybe I am looking too deeply for some clear-cut vision to appear before me, a burning bush if you will.  Maybe our guidance is more subtle than that. 

It reminds me of that story about a person who is drowning and asking god for help and a boat and a plane come by but the person refuses to go with them saying they are waiting for God to help them. So they die and ask God why he didn’t come to save them and he replied, “I sent a boat and a plane.”

The moral of that story to me is that often our answers come to us in ways we don’t expect.  They are not handed to us.  We need to seek them, recognize them even in their smallest form. We need to be willing and open to the possibilities around us, to hear the answers in whatever language they are spoken.  The voice that shatters the fog is a mere whisper to us in the silence and not screamed to us on the massive screen and lights of a roadside billboard.

So I sat contemplating those angels and their purpose, my purpose.  One I was clearly failing the universe on.  If some keeper of the universe did indeed assign their biggest angels to me for some grand plan, they were all certainly pretty pissed off at this point.  I have been floundering, stumbling about in absolute darkness for so long.  How does one turn a cold pile of ash into a mighty phoenix?  I do not even have the skills inside me to start. Or do I and I am just waving them off like the boat and the plane?

For me, in my darkness and the mist of confusion enveloping me, I had only but one desperate plea to these watchmen.  I asked them to guide me.  I offered my willingness to explore whatever path I was being led down.  I screamed out to my invisible army of angels to hear me and then whispered through my tears, “help me”.

Then silence. No thunder, no fire, no shaking of the earth. I'm impatient.  Maybe my angels were on their lunch break.

I resorted to scrolling on my phone to kill time while I waited for my burning bush to appear. I came across a post from a stranger on a travel site I follow.  She was talking about a Hawaiian spiritual practice called Ho’oponopono. The post made such an impact on me that I decided to do a bit of research on it. The mantra-based practice involves forgiveness and creating balance. Well, that sounds like something I need.   

In 2020 only weeks before my life imploded, blissfully unaware of what was to come in the following weeks I created a vision board.  Strangely, after everything fell apart, I was surprised how insightful the board actually ended up being.  I was seeking the very things in my life that I needed. Forgiveness was dead center on my vision board.  When I put it there it was more of an afterthought at the time than one of the major things I was focused on.  But subliminally my mind put it right where it needed to be apparently.  I did not imagine what a huge role it could play for me.  And one I think was worth sharing with all of you because I believe it is at the core need for all of us whether we would admit it or not.

You might be thinking “but Holly forgiveness has nothing to do with you being a fat unemployed mopey cow.” Well actually, it does.  Because lack of forgiveness mires us in deep muck making us unable to move.  Trapped in that quicksand, it affects us on a level that we do not even admit to ourselves. And it is not even the forgiveness we think we need, but the forgiveness we have not even considered, that weighs us down the most.

I still don’t have a clue what my purpose is.  But I am certain of one thing.  I need to fix this mess if I am ever going to be in a place where I can functionally even seek it.  I also know that our failings are as much a part of who we are as our successes.  I have to believe that all of this struggle is creating the building blocks and a path to a higher purpose.  And it all starts with forgiveness.