It was a crisp and sunny fall morning as I walked the streets of downtown Colorado Springs. As I approached a busy intersection, I saw a woman holding a sign. I could not make out the two words on her sign until I got closer. In big blue letters, her sign read, “Free Hugs.” I felt my body wake up a bit. I thought, I want to be hugged and I want to give a hug. “Isn’t that weird?”, my mind pondered, “a hug from a stranger on the sidewalk holding a sign.” I felt my shield rise, not in the presence of attack, but in the presence of Love. I walked up to this woman and motioned to her sign and asked with a curious smile, “So, what exactly are doing?” She just smiled and pointed to her sign. I, distrustingly said, “Just giving out a hug? For no reason?” She just nodded; a woman of few words teaching me a profound lesson. So I said to her as I laid my shield down, “I’d like a hug”, allowing the vulnerability to slide into me. She put her sign down and hugged me. And I practiced receiving. I bent my knees and allowed myself to be breathed, to be loved. For no reason at all. For nothing that I had done, and not because she knew me. With her hugs, she was just giving love away. And I was a receiver. By being a receiver, I was giving to her too; giving her a chance to give.
I have slowly been consciously and intentionally opening myself to the love of God and others for the past seventeen years. I first heard God clearly, when I entered sober living at the age of twenty-two. And slowly through my own cancer diagnosis at the age of twenty-four, the birth of my children, my very real marriage and the loss of both of my parents five years ago, I am beginning to feel God’s love. It is one thing to have the knowledge of God’s unconditional love for me, but it is a whole other thing to feel it, and then to receive it. I am learning how to soften my mind, body and heart to receive Love. It hurts. And, it is scary. It is harder than I thought. The voices that came up as this woman hugged me are my teachers. The first voice said, is she going to pull out a knife and kill me? And the other, is she going to grab my bag and run with it? Oh, my scared little self. I am such a scared little bunny at times. I want to be a student of these voices. If I soften and open to Love, will I die or be destroyed? If I receive, will something will be taken away from me? With this kind of Love in my bones, things will most definitely change, be unknown, be different. What is the other option? To live in the frozen illusion of holding my breath and perfecting perfection? Or wearing my shield in the face of this wastefully given Love? Or can I lay the shield down and let go? Let go into this beautiful Love. To navigate change, we must be rooted in our hearts. We plant our feet in our hearts and dive in. Letting go is not so much a linear process, as if letting go of something and being finished. We let go into deeper relationship with our hearts, receiving it’s wisdom and acceptance, and it is in that place that we can ride the waters of change. I look to the trees as my teachers. The trees are rooted. When they lose their leaves they do not die, but instead, they wait for new life.
I have stumbled upon this magnificent gem, God’s creative, abundant love for me and all of us. I see myself standing in the forest, holding this multifaceted sparkling rock in my hands. Now, I just want to taste it; really taste it with every part of me. So, with deep humility, let my prayer be this: God, meet me in my resistance, teach me that I do not need to work so hard to be with you. Help me to know that you are here, waiting for me, with big open arms. On your time and understanding, make me ready to jump right into them. Amen.
