Sometimes Plans Change.

During a recent morning, the familiar gurgling of the coffee pot played as I spread cream cheese on a bagel for one of my sons. The rest of the house was sleeping. The sun barely shown through the crack in the blinds and I thought to myself, “It feels really good to teach my son how to say ‘please’ when asking for a bagel and then getting it for him.” 

This little act of service, even though he learns lessons of independence daily and has no trouble being independent, is one way I show love. 

When I awoke, it was earlier than normal during quarantine. It had (and still has, to be honest) our clocks off. The walls are the same everyday. The motions are the same everyday, for the most part. I felt excitement despite some stinging in my eyes from having been awake until 1 am talking to my husband who wanted to help one of our sons sleep better and also talking to an old friend who is suffering a staggering amount of grief and guilt after the deaths of people she treasures. 

When I awoke, my plan materialized to make coffee and head out to the patio to mediate. I’d been meaning to make intentional time for meditation and up until that recent morning, it just hadn’t come easy. We have six people in our household, plus a cat. But then, as everyone in the house was sleeping, I had my chance. 

I quietly scooted out of bed, tiptoed to the bathroom where I pulled my hair back and threw on a sweater since Tennessee mornings can still be chilly in the Spring, and walked back into the bedroom. All was still quiet. I tiptoed to the door, gently turned the knob, pulled the door open enough to get my body through, and… 

A perfect little angel was sitting bright-eyed on the couch watching Sponge Bob. I was so happy to see his face. “Good morning!” I said. He told me he slept well and explained the significance of the episode of Sponge Bob he’d chosen. 

“I want a bagel for breakfast,” he said. 

“How do you ask?” I reminded. 

“Please.” He remembered. 

I made the bagel, poured orange juice, laid out vitamins, brewed the coffee.

After my husband awoke, I came outside to the patio and meditated. My plan was delayed by about an hour, but I did it anyways and it was marvelous. This particular session helped me remember who I am when all the pain, uncertainty, need for control, and fear is stripped away. 

When all those negative emotions and residues were stripped away, do you know what was left? 

Love. 

Limitless, ever-growing, bright and beautiful love, as a gift from God and the Universe was there.

Rewind to my life about five years ago. Maybe six. I was talking to my mom during a time when my first marriage was falling apart. I felt lonelier than I ever had in my entire life. I had lost my purpose and my way. I was in a spiral of self doubt and stuck rather than progressing in healing from past traumas that current events of my life had been triggering, for years. Compounded grief from years of loved ones dying also played a role. And, people who I thought loved and supported me were falling away like dead autumn leaves.

Related: Death Brings New Life 

“I don’t feel love. I just feel so unloved,” I said.

I could tell she was worried. But, I went back to my life and she went back to hers, where the grind had kept us so busy it was hard to focus on mental and physical health. Afterall, there were bills to pay, kiddos to take care of, and a fast-paced life of toiling along. 

Can you relate?

Sometimes busyness is a blessing and sometimes a curse, right? (Wouldn’t it be nice if it could ebb and flow with our needs rather than the opposite?)

Even though apart in the busyness of life, I still relied on age-old advice from Mom to get through the days as best as possible. This advice involved Mom telling me about my guardian angel when I was as toddler. Mom used to work second shift at the hospital and my step dad or a babysitter would put me to bed while she was away. This caused distress, as I desperately wanted my momma at bedtime for comfort. After all, it was dark out there. And there were noises. 

And she was safe. 

Part of calming my fears involved telling me about my guardian angel, who was always with me, protecting me. And my angel did protect me all the time! 

As a child, I used to picture that perfect, wonderful angel, robed in white with a golden halo and white light aura, just sitting outside my bedroom window, ready to intervene at a moment’s notice.

So, about a year later after our conversation about feeling unloved, at Christmas, after my separation from my ex-husband was solidified, but before the divorce was final, Mom gave me a little rear-view mirror ornament with an angel saying, “I love you every minute of every day.”

I just cried. Because I knew it was true.

I was on my way back to love, and I wasn’t letting it go ever again. And I knew that it would only amplify over time, letting in more blessings and leading me to bigger opportunities for even more love.

And by that I mean love in the bigger sense. In the sense that is the foundation of all compassion, grace, healing, and the opposite of apathy. 

So, let’s talk about apathy and hate for a minute.

Because it helps to understand a thing like love by also thinking about what it is not. Some people think apathy is the opposite of love while some people think hate is the opposite of love.

What really is the opposite of love? I’d argue it’s a lack of access to the divine inner light, we as humans all have within ourselves, as a result of our own trappings. 

Hate and apathy are both emotions that dim your light and hinder your ability to access it within yourself and from the Universe (or God, if you prefer).

Having felt both hate and apathy myself, being the object of both from others, and spending time being introspective after several life traumas, here are my definitions: 

Hate can be fueled by fear or the immature need to keep someone else down so they themselves feel lifted up and special. Hate is completely ego driven and involves feelings of insecurity, anger, elitism, revenge for unmet expectations, and can even go hand in hand with a victim mentality.

Hate is a lack of love, not the opposite of love. Hate is more about the person doing the hating rather than the object of the hate.

Now, moving onto apathy, the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of apathy is:

1. lack of feeling or emotion: impassiveness

2. lack of interest or concern: indifference

To add nuance to this definition, to me, apathy almost feels like dissociation and detachment - emotionally distancing yourself so you don’t have to feel the pain that comes from disappointment and caring about others’ approval or disapproval. Whatever that is traumatic that is happening has become an event outside of yourself so you can carry on surviving. It feels like if you cared, you’d die (or be deeply wounded), so you have to stop caring. 

So, it’s plausible if others hurt you, or even if you hurt yourself, you can also become detached from your own self and apathetic about life, losing who you are.

Perhaps apathy and dissociation aren’t always related - I’m not a psychologist, after all. Either way, if these emotions of hate and apathy are more about the people experiencing them rather than the objects of them, would the same not be true for love? Love is more about the person doing the loving than the object of the love? 

But, going from feeling no love and even actively feeling unloved to now having a limitless supply, I’ve come to the conclusion that:

The role of pure love in our human lives is a way to reconnect with the divine (God, the Universe - whatever you choose to call it) so you may triumph over the suffering of the physical world.

Pure love is peace, acceptance…

This is true for not only yourself and other humans, but other creatures and our Earth as well. 

Pure love is the highest and most powerful emotion we can experience.

Even if you don’t consciously know it, when you’ve judged yourself based on how others have treated you or events you had no control over, you’ve taken love away from yourself.

You have to feel pure love for yourself and be gentle with yourself in order to rediscover who you are. When you lose sight of love, you lose sight of yourself. I did.

And, there’s this misconception that loving yourself is selfish. 

Loving yourself is not selfish. 

It’s necessary so you can thrive. And when you thrive yourself, you can help other people thrive too. So, loving yourself is loving your neighbor, your family, your community, and so forth because loving yourself has a ripple effect. It attracts other, different types of love to you, inspires others, and leads by example so others can do the same.

Loving yourself, in a pure, unadulterated, and nonjudgemental way, is a form of rebellion against those who hurt you because they are hurting. 

Had they only loved themselves, maybe they wouldn’t have hurt you to continue the cycle of negativity, fear, hurt, pain… 

And while some suffering is normal in life, it’s all the more bearable and surmountable when pure love is your foundation.

So, back to the story again.

As I started to rebuild my confidence after years of what felt like living in the pit of despair (where are my Princess Bride fans at?), I decided to focus on more love and thought the rest would fall into place. So far, that hypothesis has proven true.

I started doing things again that I hadn’t done in years, like painting, journaling, discovering new music - actively listening like I’d done for so many hours at night before in life - proactively focusing on my health and shoring up all my preventative medical appointments I was behind on. Even though I still had major healing to do (and maybe will for the rest of this life) and people and events to let go of, little bits of my self had started to crack through again.

In what seemed like miraculous timing, a friend I had met at work nearly a decade prior decided to go back to school to become a life coach around the time I had just separated from my first marriage. As I settled into a new, safe apartment, he contacted me and offered free life coaching sessions to meet a requirement for one of his classes. I jumped on it. This was an opportunity that came because I was looking for change, and when something this obvious smacks you in the face, you go with it.

Around our third session, James asked me, “What do you want more of?” 

“Love,” I said, without hesitation. 

James walked me through naming words that I associate with love. I listed words like: 

• Nonjudgmental

• Openness

• Humanity

• Togetherness

To name a few. 

Then, James wrote a sentence and handed it to me. 

“Wow, that’s powerful,” I said. 

“They’re your own words,” he said.

James said to read it everyday and see what happens. 

Related: Gauging Emotions to Heal and Manifest as Your True Self

Now, a mantra alone won’t change your life, but it’s one tool that helps change your mindset in whatever direction you want to go. It helps you set your intentions. Intentions help you take action.

Soon after reading mine daily, I started noticing acts of kindness over moments of weakness in others. For example, if a friend or boyfriend became irritable over something I said, instead of getting angry and lashing back, I now had the tools to stop in the present moment, observe why the emotion occurred, and then change my reaction for a more constructive outcome. This wasn’t perfect, by the way. I still messed up then and still mess up now too.

But, I started becoming grateful for experiences that challenged me rather than thinking, “Why is this happening to me?” 

And that’s why I look forward to a circumstance as small as making unexpected bagels early in the morning for my children or as life altering as remote work being the way of the future…  even if it changes my plans. It’s a privilege to be here, in pure love. 

Can you relate? Are you working on finding your true self again after losing sight of love? Drop a comment below.

Love,

Credit: Title photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash. Graphics by Brandi.