I'm Okay, You're Okay

Friday afternoon February 5th was a funky day for me. I usually stay at my brother's house when I'm in LA but this weekend he had another friend visiting so I was scheduled to stay with my friend Debra, another USM student, and her husband. Because her day was so busy, I was meeting Debra at school and then going to her house. I had made my plane reservations months ago and had planned for an easy afternoon hanging out with Den and his dogs. Thus, I found myself in LAX with four hours to kill before class started. And it was raining cats and dogs outside - the coldest, grayest, nastiest weather southern California has ever seen. All my ideas about walking on the beach or going to a movie or a museum sounded like opportunities to get cold and wet to the bone. So, I decided to hang out in the airport and take a shuttle directly to school right before class started.

That's when my curriculum reared its ugly head.

Okay, maybe my Authentic Self saw an opportunity for me to heal a part of me that hadn't been healed yet. Yeah, that sounds better.

I had left my house this morning in a grumpy mood. It was Lexi's birthday and I was missing being with her on her actual Birth Day and even though we had celebrated the night before and I had made rice crispie treats for her class and she was fine with me not being there, I was a bit peeved. With a perfunctory kiss, I said goodbye to Chris and started the 90-minute process of dropping my kids off at their respective schools.

My grouchiness stayed with me throughout my drive to Sacramento, my plane ride to LA and lunch at CPK (Thai chicken pizza, which was really good). I ate lunch, read a book, listened to some music on my iPod, watched the rain falling on the planes, and then, an hour into my four hour saga, I was bored. So what did I do? I called Chris at work. He immediately made me laugh and talked with me and I felt guilty as hell. Here I was interrupting his work just because I'm bored and looking for some entertainment and he happily spends 15 or 20 minutes entertaining me. Even when I wasn't very loving this morning when I left the house in my funk. Even though I have lots of days when I'm too busy to really connect with him, what with all the cooking, cleaning ,working, kid-shuttling, etc., that fills our regular days. But he is always there, even now when I feel I don't deserve this kind of unconditional love. I haven't done anything to earn this beautiful love and acceptance from him.

And that is my curriculum for the weekend.

I feel like I need to earn anything good that comes my way. My beautiful friend Debra enthusiastically and generously said "YES!!! XOXOX" when I sheepishly asked her if I could stay with her this weekend. What had I done to earn that response? What would I do to earn my keep at their house this weekend? Buy them lots of groceries? Take them out to dinner? I had to do something! Didn't I?

In exercises this weekend, I got to go deeper into this issue and look at the roots of my upset and beliefs. I gave voice to the part of me that couldn't believe people would just like me as I am and it turned out to be me as a little girl when I didn't feel like I fit in, that I wasn't like other people, that I'm different and weird. Once she spoke and I recognized the truth of her words, the spell was broken and I could see how I had felt that way but I don't really want to be like other people, anyway. I just want to be me. I loved and accepted that child part of me and together we celebrated our uniqueness.

In another exercise, I got to directly address my situation with not being able to accept Chris's unconditional love. I was feeling like I take him for granted but expect him to be there for me even though I feel like I suck at expressing my love for him. I talked and talked, trying to figure out what was going on with me. Finally, I was out of words and I stopped talking and just waited for my partner to say something to me. Instead of responding with words, my partner just looked at me. I couldn't meet his gaze. I looked everywhere but in his eyes. There was too much love there. Growing more and more uncomfortable avoiding his eyes, I finally met his gaze for a few seconds. Then I burst out with "Stop loving me!"

"I'm just mirroring what I see in your eyes," was all he said. That threw me for a loop. Curious, I was now able to meet his gaze for a longer time, even though it was still uncomfortable. When he said something about "receiving," something shifted inside of me. I had been resisting taking any kind of love in. My resistance to receiving started sinking away. We looked at each other in silence for several minutes, until the session ended.

My partner was my mirror. He showed me how the world sees me, how Chris sees me. How could he have been my mirror, though? I was just sitting there being myself. I wasn't doing anything extra or special or even anything at all. I was just being me. Then I got it. I'm just being me and Chris loves me just the way I am. Maybe my love for Chris is in me and radiating out from me even when I'm tired, cranky, irritable, etc. I can always improve my expression of my love for Chris, but the love itself is always there, even when I'm not expressing it very well.

As a divine being having a human experience, I am at my core love. That love shines through me even when I am not aware of it. It just is. The simple fact that I am here on this planet makes me worthy and deserving of receiving love. I see that now. I can just be myself. That is enough.