Eventually the bill for lying to yourself for all these years comes due. You wake up one morning crazed with longing. A cord snaps inside, and everything in you cries out for something more: wholeness, depth, communion, freedom, genuine intimacy, and a peace within.
-- Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems, from "What Matters Most: Ten Lessons in Living Passionately from the Song of Solomon"

Ahh! There you are standing on the balcony of St. Lucia’s Coconut Bay Resort and Spa, overlooking dreamy black and white sands and the luscious blue-green waters of the Atlantic shores. The fan above wistfully rotates sending a refreshing waft of warm air to ease the heat of the island’s sun. The sound of syncopated drums and a rasping voice calling for an end to oppression and injustice play pleasurably in the background, and the vitalizing taste of fresh strawberries, kiwi, grapes, pomegranates, plantains, and pineapples still linger on your tongue. Then you hear him snoring. You realize you're dreaming... and where did you get that funny taste in your mouth?

Actually, you’re in your kitchen, standing in front of the sink, nursing coffee too strong and wishing for a bigger house so you didn’t have to hear your husband’s snoring in the next room. (Or, maybe you could keep the house and get a different husband. Nah, they all snore.)

You scratch your scarfed-head and tug at your worn bathrobe and you wonder, where has all your joy gone? Where have your feelings of worthiness and purpose escaped. When did you allow them to leave and will you ever get them back?

Now, these musings haven’t come out of nowhere. You’re very familiar with this line of questioning. See, for many years you’ve wondered where you lost your happiness and optimism, your sense of passion and vitality. You remember when you were the life of the party, the one who was last to leave the joint, and the first to open her home for an impromptu bash. You’ve looked for your joy everywhere and you’re convinced it’s got to be somewhere between, “Do you take…?” and “I do,” or the kids and their needs, or between the 9 – 5 (or 6 or 7…) and the 24/7 of cooking, cleaning, and feeding everybody else’ desires at home. Or maybe you left it under the Mother Board, Usher Board, or otherwise bored at church. Wherever your stuff is, you desperately need it back.
Or maybe you never really had it, or at least not a good enough grip on it for it to even be recognized as joy. Perhaps you set it down to grab hold of this existence – the one that gives you someone to sleep next to and take care of the trash and oil and tire changes. Perhaps what you set down to accept this choice never really had a chance to materialize as happiness because everybody always told you what you needed was a spouse and he would in turn make you happy and provide you with everything you needed. And so if you were not happy, which they emphasized was never guaranteed anyway, you would have enough other stuff so that you could just look over being happy and simply exist inside the brace of a marital union. So how in the hell do you uncover or seize joy and ultimate wholeness if you never fully knew it in the first place and whatever you thought you knew got misplaced anyway, you ask as you take the last sip of bad coffee.

Now don’t get it wrong – you love your family, your church work, and your job – most of the time. And, really, you wouldn’t trade a thing for them… you think. But something inside you is parched and diminishing. Something doesn’t feel right. Something is incomplete. Something is aching for life that is deeper and richer and it won't be ignored. You’ve been able to set these feelings aside for some time now, but this is the year of Jubilee and no longer can you be a slave to mere survival and someone else’s decisions.
So you go to shake your husband awake, not realizing that you’re still on auto-pilot relying on him to bring you some joy (or attention and appreciation) when it hits you that whatever it is you need to do to find completion is not in another person; it’s in you, it belongs to you, and now is the time for you to call it to the surface. But how?

By trusting yourself. Trusting that you have all the answers you need to make you life what you want it to be. Trusting that while you love your family, they are not the end all and treating them as such not only drains you, but them as well. The stuff your feeling is requiring you to honor yourself, to sit with yourself and meditate on how each emotion feels within you. To ride those emotions and give them room to fully breathe. You are required to go beyond the labels and assumptions, putting on paper what and who you want to be and burning to a crisp that which no longer serves you on this part of your life’s journey. Tell your family and your friends what you need. They may not understand and may give you more grief than anybody else ever would. But if you stop this process of growth and evolvement, you’ll perish.

Trust God that this is your opportunity to get it right, make it work for you, and find the peace you need. Let everybody be and go find the You you’re in need of.

We’re praying for you.

Sadiqqa © 2007