On Sundays I’ll join this discussion group where we talk about “deep spiritual topics”, and Maureen, the leader of this group said that this week’s topic was PATIENCE. And what struck me was when she said, “if you’re impatient, it’s because you lack trust.”

“Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety.” That’s a quote from A Course in Miracles, and the premise of Course in Miracles is that the greatest miracle is the act of gaining a full awareness of love’s presence in our life.

I go up to Wisconsin almost every weekend to see my partner, but this past weekend he texted me saying, “it’s not the best weekend for you to come up, because I have a lot of studying to do, and there’s so much going on with work, etc etc”

It was a completely normal thing to say, and rationally it made sense, rationally that made sense.

But irrationally, it felt like the relationship was ending…

It felt so real that I felt an actual burning sensation in my chest. It felt like I was on fire, and I realized that I don’t fully trust.

My thought process was, he’s distancing himself because he’s preparing to leave…

Why? Because I’m not as great as he thinks I am

Why? Because these thoughts clearly indicate that I’m insecure, and if I’m insecure, then I must not be that great, and once he finds out, it will end.

The more you feel like someone’s pulling away, the greater the temptation there is to reach out, to grasp for something. Some affirmation, whatever it is. Something that’s going to make it all feel better.

I wanted to text him, but I didn’t. I sat with the feeling of being on fire, and I waited patiently, but anxiously.

Those who trust, are patient. You gotta know when it’s time to lick your wounds.

I tried to separate the feelings I was having, from the facts, because they are different.

Feeling is: My cat hates me

Fact is: I forgot to feed my cat

Feeling: The person I love is leaving me

Fact: My partner connects with me every day, makes time for me, brings me around his family, supportive…there is no evidence to support otherwise. And I am self-diagnosing myself with anxious attachment. I actually do have a license to do that.

For those of you who are not familiar, anxious attachment is when you have a difficult time feeling secure in relationships: marked by fear of rejection, abandonment, and a bunch of other cool stuff. AND the sensation of your entire chest being on fire. I made that last one up.

It feels like a long time to be patient when your chest is on fire, but it wasn’t too long before I received a bunch of texts from my partner saying, “I love you, I miss you, etc, all the good things.

I did, I felt relief.

I’m not sure if you guys notice this phenomenon, it has no name, but it’s when you’re in a relationship with someone you really love, and then like, all of your sh*it comes up, and I mean, stuff you thought you worked on, stuff you didn’t even know you had, just comes out of the woodwork like…

BAM!!!

For a moment I was embarrassed, maybe ashamed because the feeling of being disposable made it pretty clear to me that I have a deficiency in self-love, because that’s what it comes down to. The root of insecurities in our relationships is due to a lack of self-love.

And i’m not “supposed” to have that.

I’m supposed to feel whole.

And I’m not “supposed” to share this with my partner, because he might just take my word for it…

But the beautiful thing about saying that out loud, is that I can hear how much I don’t believe that what I’m saying is true. I do have a part of me that I struggle to love and accept fully, its true, but that doesn’t mean I am undeserving of love. We are all on this journey of loving ourselves. Sometimes I need to hear myself speak so I can decipher if it’s a load of sh*t.

What is said by Rumi, one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetic geniuses of mankind is that, “your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

When all of our “stuff” comes out within the context of a romantic relationship, it shows us where our barriers are so clearly that it’s kind of obnoxious, so that we can break them down.

It gives us the opportunity to grow in love, and I think that’s a really good reason to be brave.

I work with clients in therapy, day in and day out, and what I find each and every time is that the cure for the pain is within pain. I wish everybody knew that.

I knew I wouldn’t find what I was most scared of in my pain, I knew it would be something else, something far less scary, because it always is.

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too”

Ernest Hemingway said that, but I think it could sound like something I wrote…

Some say that “Patience is natural to the teacher of God”, but I think we can also say that patience is natural to the teacher of Love. “Love was designed in such a way that it can shed light on our faults and shortcomings — that is, reprove us — and then correct us.” Once again, not an original quote by me.

I started to lose myself a bit, in the process of loving, and I needed to remind myself of everything I help others to be reminded of every day, that when we’ve been hurt,or scared, or disappointed one too many times, we can forget we’re special. Kinda like a diamond that was thrown in the dumpster. It’s still a diamond, you just need to wipe off all the trash residue.

We may not have been told, or we may have forgotten that we’re connected to this thing we call love, or God, or the universe,or this amazing earth, and that’s pretty FIRE.

I reconnected to that truth, and it all came rushing back.