Last week when I’d dropped my grandfather home after church, he’d asked me what my plans were and I told him I was undecided but threw out some options of things I may do when we parted ways. As I drove away, I realized that asking me if I had any plans was his way of inviting me to spend some time with him. He didn’t want to impose on my time, but he also was seeking to connect.
As I drove away and thought about his question, I made a commitment to myself that I would spend time with him the following weekend. Instead of merely picking him up for church and then dropping him off home after service, I would make the effort to spend some additional time talking and hanging out with him. I got the sense that he was lonely. I knew he must be since my family is not the closest and he doesn’t have many friends still living.
I made plans to bring him by my mom’s the following Sunday after church to have lunch and hang out and I was rewarded with such a beautiful day and incredibly sacred moment when I brought him back home. We sat in my car having an unexpectedly deep conversation that touched me in ways I can’t really describe. As I drove away, all I could do was cry tears of joy and say “thank you” to God for the gift of connection that was bestowed upon me.
I understood even more deeply the power of love, acts of service, and what many of the spiritual teachers describe when they say, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” I was gifted by the depth of our conversation and the depth of love I felt in this experience. I felt a renewed belief in the work that I am choosing to do and my decision to pivot into what I believe is my life’s calling. I felt an overwhelming hope for my family and others who have been distanced by emotional repression, lack of loving communication, and fear of vulnerability. I felt a renewed belief in my ability to help others by teaching the skills I’d learned and the insight I’ve gained in delving deeply into spirituality, my own story, and psychology.
To provide a little backstory to why this moment touched me so deeply, I lived in my grandfather’s home with my mother through age 14 and he was the male figure in my life throughout my upbringing. At 14 he sold the property and my mother and I moved out together and he moved out on his own. My grandmother had passed away and he was now a widower. Once we stopped living together, we went into the routine that the rest of my family has. We saw each other on birthday’s and holidays and that was about it.
I never really realized how abnormal my family was until I’d begun dating my fiancé and realized that his family actually enjoyed spending time with one another. He would go out with his aunts and uncles. He would call his grandmothers to check in and see how they were doing. It was then that I began realizing how distant my own family was. Up until then, I thought my family was pretty normal and just had their own dynamic.
After engaging on my spiritual journey, I now see that this should not be “normal.” We’re all placed here with a network of individuals around us that help us in many different ways to become the person we are. Sometimes, people mold us through the love they provide and other times, they mold us through the adversity and injustices we suffer early in life, and other times they mold us through abandonment. Either way, I’m convinced that every person is placed here by the divine to direct us more deeply into what it means to be alive and equip us to better accomplish our unique purpose in life. Each experience and interaction, when we are open to it, leads us more deeply into our soul to experience the truth of who we are and guide us into the development of our being.
At every moment, we have the choice to move closer to those in our lives or to create distance. I’ve seen in my family that there are grievances that have never been worked through in a loving manner. There are people who have repressed feelings about situations that transpired, but have not been able to open up enough to have a loving conversation about it. Instead, they bury and they foster bitterness, hurt, and anger, though they’d probably deny it if asked because that would leave them too exposed.
Unfortunately, I know I’m not alone in having a family that seems more like acquaintances. There is a deep disconnect between people because many have not taken the time to understand themselves and have not learned how to feel and express their emotion constructively. Many of us grow up in the culture of stifled emotions. We pack it away for many reasons and to the untrained eye, we seem happy enough, but underneath we are so out of touch with ourselves, what we feel about things that have happened to us, or why we are here at all. Because we can’t even understand what we feel, we can’t do anything to address it. I was there.
While we are in this place, we want connection, we know something is missing, but we can’t quite figure out what it is. We are so out of touch with our feelings that we can’t even admit them to ourselves. We spend our time numbing, pretending and running. When we’re doing this, we are dividing our deepest self from “who we think we are“ as well as the rest of the world. In essence we are running from ourselves, running from the pain of past hurts, running from the wounds people who didn’t know how to fully love us left behind. We think that running is safer, but run long enough and tell me whether you become physically tired. Running drains the energy that could be utilized to “face the giant” and heal the hurt.
Sometimes facing the giant involves seeing the hurt for ourselves in addition to opening up to those who inflicted the wound. It’s a delicate matter and a sacred moment when that occurs, but if handled with care it can heal and restore in an instant. This is what I spoke of with my grandfather. I saw his pain at the distance in our family. I saw how much the day meant to him. I saw yearning for things to be different. I saw the hurt of his children because of slights that they believe they received. I saw his perspective in doing what he thought was right as a father. I saw broken people with an opportunity for restoration, love, healing, and wholeness. I saw an old man seeking closeness with his children before he leaves this Earth. I saw a miracle in the works and the experience was truly profound.
I believe in miracles. I believe that we can heal, we can connect to one another, we can experience deep love within our souls. I believe that is what we were created for. I believe that love is our primary purpose in this lifetime. It is our purpose to cultivate as much of this phenomenon within ourselves and among others as we possibly can. I am blessed to have experienced the beauty of this moment where I may have been able to help bridge a gap that has existed for far too long.
Who would you like to be closer to? Are there any relationships that need restoration in your life? Have you expressed your desire to the person you’d like to move closer to? Have you been witness to a miracle? Describe your experience. I’d love to hear from you.