Just Like Me.

Take some deep breaths.
Notice the inhalation exhalation of your breath.

As you are able, bring someone into our mind that you have difficulty relating to.
Maybe they have opposing ideas or philosophies.
Maybe they are simple unkind.

Using all the wisdom you have acquired through your experiences, imagine gazing into this person's eyes with an open heart and an open mind.
Without trying to change them in any way, say to yourself...

This person is incarnated in a body. Just like me.
This person was once a child. Just like me.
This person has known joy in their life. Just like me.
This person has known sorrow. Just like me.
This person has loved someone. Just like me.
This person has had their heart broken. Just like me.
This person has experienced confusion and uncertainty. Just like me.
This person has tried and failed. Just like me.
This person needs forgiveness. Just like me.
This person wants to be loved. Just like me.
This person wants to be happy. Just like me.
See them now as part of your experience as a human being and say to them,

May you be happy and free. I wish for you strength, peace, and liberation in your human life.
Notice how this changes how you hold this person...and how you hold yourself.

Try this practice with different people. We can even use this practice when we become impatient or annoyed by a complete stranger...Just like me.


(This meditation was written by Brian W, a co-worker from another ministry market. Our team used it in a recent retreat, and since then I have been thinking a lot about it. I hope it blesses you as it has blessed me.)
Peace, friends!

Gone but Healed.

It was a cool October night I was driving home from an evening work meeting.
I was feeling excited because that Saturday I would be going on a double date with my older cousin Mike and his wife Lisa, along with the man I was dating at the time.
I remember the exact red light where my car was stopped when the thought hit me.

Even though Dad is gone, our relationship is more whole and healed than it ever was when he was alive. He is physically gone from life but I feel closer to him now more than ever.

I burst into tears, feeling overwhelmed by a deep sense of something that I would continue to lean into in the coming weeks.
I was very blessed to have an overall very healthy and loving family of origin. My parents, while imperfect, did their very best and gave my two siblings and I a stable home and loving childhood.
As I grew up, and began my own healing journey, I saw one of the area's that suffered was my emotional relationship with my dad. 
As a sensitive, tender little girl, I often felt my dad was not emotionally available to me or minimized my emotions and feelings. The father wound in my little Patty heart was probably one of the area's I most needed inner healing and growth.
Looking back it affected many things: how I saw myself, my own codependency, and even my choice in men - in a particular way the man I married. What I really needed from my dad was not often emotionally available to me, and that affected me more than I realized as I got older.

I am grateful and proud of the inner work I have done over the last six years to acknowledge and heal that wound. However, I was not expecting such a profound insight into this healing journey with my dad almost a year after he died. And yet, the more I sat in that realization, the more I prayed about it or discussed it with my spiritual director, I began to see God was at work here.

Watching my dad physically suffer while we helped care for him and into his final days was one of the hardest yet most sacred experiences of my life.
It was as if all the healing work I had faced in my father wound Jesus came and said to me, "My sweet Patty girl, all this has been restored and made whole. Your dad is gone but all this is healed as much as it can be this side of Heaven."
Dad's physical presence is gone. And yet, I feel closer to him in several ways. Our relationship is more whole and healed.
Perhaps it sounds a bit odd, it certainly feels weird to say it this way. But it is true. To the deep part of my soul, it is true.
I know not everyone perhaps has this experience with a parent who passed away. So Jesus, find me very grateful and humble for that beautiful insight. It makes me more hopeful and excited for the day when I see my dad again and am able to give him a big bear hug.

Dad may be gone, but it has all been healed.

Jesus, find me grateful for that.

Three Things Andrew Garfield Teaches Us About Grief

As I experience the milestones of the first year after my dad's passing, I find myself curious about how grief can manifest in one's life. Whether it's in response to the loss of a parent, child, spouse, or significant other, grief is universally messy, painful, and raw. There is no one way to navigate it.Loss will inevitably touch each of our lives; it's necessarily part of the human experience.
Recently, I came across an interview with actor Andrew Garfield (you may know him better as Spider-Man) on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I have been following Garfield's work with interest and curiosity, so to hear him talk about the recent loss of his own mother touched me in a particular way.
What Garfield had to say about grief is bound to resonate with anyone who's experienced loss, recently or otherwise.

Grief is unexpressed love

Garfield beautifully referred to the grief he feels for the loss of his mother as "unexpressed love." When we grieve the loss of a loved one, a big portion of what we miss is never being able to hug or hold that person again, to laugh and smile and be silly together, to hear the sound of his or her voice.

It is all those moments we won't get to express our love, affection, and warmth and the end of being able to experience receiving those things from the person whose presence we are grieving.

In his heartfelt interview with Colbert, Garfield says, "I hope this grief stays with me because it's all the unexpressed love that I didn't get to tell her. And I told her every day."

You can read the rest over at Verily.