Galation 5:1      

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

Out of the gate with a scripture, this may be a first for me. I want you to listen to this scripture and as we talk hold it in the back of your mind. It will answer itself.

So lately, I have been looking at something I do as a 2 The Helper on the Enneagram. If you are a part of this community long enough you will or have already heard a lot of us talking about The Enneagram. In brief, it is another tool of Awareness that can help us see how our personalities and the way we are wired drives the choices we make. http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/Tests_Battery.asp

I like to do PR for myself. You may be asking what’s the big deal??? Or what do you mean by PR? Well, what I mean by that is…I don’t like to look bad to others especially, if I tried to do the right thing; I don’t like people to be mad at me, whatever the reason; I have a fear of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved.

The big deal is. I never saw this about myself. And I’m not thrilled that this is something I do. How this all revealed itself was, recently I was going through what felt like a break up from a friend and felt cut off from anyway of resolving it (fixing it). That is not a place I like to find myself. It’s one thing to have a conflict with someone, it’s entirely something else to have a conflict that can’t seem to get resolved. Your only option seems to be just leaving it sitting inside of you and around you cutting off your air supply.

I was trying to figure out how to get reconciliation (or something that would make me feel better). That’s what most of these situations seem to be about really making me feel better and not having conflict. I spoke to a friend about what I was thinking. That friend said, “Angie you don’t have to do PR for yourself”. What? I wasn’t doing PR, all I want is to avoid a real mess or this disagreement spiraling out of control. Again…“well, you don’t have to do PR, you can just leave it and let it be for awhile”. My friend said.

Hold the phone! What would life be without me tidying it up? I’m the one that cleans up the messes and ties up the loose ends. How can I let things stay messy and not try and fix them? How can I stay in the mess of this? How will I know that I am Loved, if I don’t try to fix this?

What a good friend! I think at some level I knew that I did PR. I just wouldn’t have called it that. I’ve been working toward new understanding for awhile. I know I don’t like things left hanging and look for ways to get them resolved. Often at the expense of myself or real peace in my life. I saw this as a righteous characteristic. I mean, it felt like reconciliation after all. Which feels good at the time and resembles real reconciliation.

When you feel you are doing something good, how can it be wrong? Name an experience in your life where you meant something for good and it backfired? ie. misunderstanding with a friend that you tried to make right and they couldn’t hear you; helping someone and they don’t appreciate it; a project you wanted to be inclusive to everyone and ended up alienating many etc. (When we answered this in the community of The Bridge people were very vulnerable with their experiences. The experiences that didn’t turn out they way they envisioned, even when they felt they had done the right thing. Feel free to answer this question for yourself and post it below.)

(READ AT LEAST 2 TIMES) “When good things can also be recognized as bad things, then you have the spiritual gift of discernment. This will also allow you to see that many things which are good for you are also bad things for other people, the animals, or the earth. It forces you beyond “either/or” thinking toward “both/and,” or non-dual, thinking. Once you have learned to discern the disguised nature of evil, you will be able to recognize that both perfection and imperfection are everywhere—everything is broken and fallen: weak and poor, you and me, your marriage, your children, and, yes, America and the Church, too.” FR. Richard Rohr

All of this may sound so simple in hindsight, but in the heat of the moment and in the pain, anger and rejection we may be feeling it may be nearly impossible to get a different perspective. That friend using words that didn’t have the sting that maybe kiss ass or codependent might have for me became a pivotal piece to my new found awareness of my tendencies. It also helped me to be able to hear something I was ready to hear. This was a moment of life long slavery to my own PR, turning into the beginnings of LIBERATION FOR ME! Does this mean that now I have this figured out? Hardly, but I have the new beginnings of noticing.

Because I have this new found frame of reference, I have something new to practice. I have new questions to ask…What is my motivation? What am I afraid of leaving untidy? What piece of this am I trying to sew up? Why can’t I just let this be messy? This liberation has left me with the thought…Why am I seeing this now? I don’t have the answer to this. I think most of life, if we are open to it, is made up of tiny revelations, not massive ones. Baby steps forward and baby steps backward. Sort of a beautifully frustrating dance toward health. God is faithful in the “Big Reveal” to have us get it. She is not sitting waiting for us to shape up and have it all together. Timing maybe is everything.