i don’t wanna move mountains

This was written weeks ago. It’s intimate. I wrote it for myself, never intending to post it within this interiors inspiration sanctuary with DIY, home tours, paint color suggestions, and furniture resources. When I read it to a friend, he encouraged me to release it so others might open their hearts a little wider. This moment in time is shared in a spirit of unknowing; in a spirit of hopeful and heartful service to anyone on a healing path.

i don’t wanna move mountains

This is bound to get trippy. My typing is clumsy; my right index finger bulky with bandages and tape. The day before yesterday, in a spirit of inflated enoughness, I tried to bring more order to our home and failed.

I’m wobbly and can’t spring clean without shedding skin literally and figuratively. There is much to let go. Old furniture that no longer serves. Old mindsets, patterns, and pains. Old connections. Old wounds that won’t heal.

My plan was to tackle the excess. To sell belongings online and quickly purge. But I ventured alone. An impossibly heavy box in the basement needed to move from here to there, and have you ever seen a girl-sized woman rearrange furniture? Leverage, will, and adrenaline…BOOM. I have moved impossible mountains plenty of times.

The box was nearly dragged to its proper position thanks to its convenient finger-sized holes. But my fingers were unprotected by work gloves, and I had not anticipated giant staples inside.

The metal ripped open my index finger. Of course it did. I chop a lot of vegetables and have a gift for slicing fingers open then driving to urgent care. But I realized I couldn’t keep pressure on the wound and also drive. Or maybe I could have, but I just didn’t want to stop working. It’s becoming rare to have sufficient energy to tackle these projects.

I skipped the stitches and wrapped my finger tightly in layers of bandaids. Then I erased it from memory, pulling on gloves and returning to the chaos.

When my husband stopped home to change into plumber-appropriate jeans to install a son’s new toilet, I yelled up from the basement. “I may need stitches, but I’m not ready to examine the wound without Xanax.” My good humor reassured him on his way out the door.

Later that evening, I showered before ever addressing the injury. When I unraveled layers of latex at the bathroom sink, the wound just sort of…exploded. With my left thumb, I pressed the blurry letters of my husband’s name in my phone. When he saw the mess up close, he said it was deep and might require stitches. He brought gauze, tape, and peroxide.

I felt woozy as he dressed the wound. Without my glasses, it was a blurry abstraction of red and white. The shame of my haste and ignorance was all that stung.

Shame is fertile in the dark. This I know. This is where it grows.

With the wound properly covered, I could settle and sleep, and I did. For three hours. Then a Raynaud’s flare cursed both of my hands. These painful spasms and episodes are common now with my autoimmune condition. My husband massaged my arms and shoulders, and before long, circulation returned. I felt awake enough for more haste, starting my workday at 1 a.m.

I didn’t seek help or pivot from the plans for the day because pushing through makes perfect sense to someone who lacks sleep and self-compassion.

Last night, with a utility knife in hand, my husband offered to change my bandages. I shooed him from the bathroom despite feeling terrified to address the damage underneath. I began the slow, gentle excavation of an injury well-covered.

The uncovering took thirty minutes because I didn’t want another explosion, and I stayed entirely absent. I wasn’t there while I observed a soft, scared, injured animal with a sore paw. I watched someone nurture someone wounded. I witnessed courage where fear was present too.

While I don’t understand the mechanics of divine help, I only know consenting to it helps me get out of the way.

A hill of bandages in bloody shreds beside me, the puncture wound remained hidden under peroxide bubbles. As the effervescence quieted and the wound emerged, it looked wondrously worse than I imagined.

That industrial staple tearing through the soft pad of my finger had left a heart-shaped hole behind; an unmistakable heart wound.

I could see which flared edges of flesh should be joined together. Now ointment could be applied before I wrapped it tenderly. Now the bleeding stopped.

I fell asleep last night believing all would be well in the morning. Of course all would be well! There’s an order to things when you slow down and you do all the right things, yes? Properly addressed wounds heal in a linear manner and stay well-protected, don’t they?

A few hours later, I woke up in a panic. Since I am a stubborn DIYer and not a nurse, the bandage bundle slipped off my finger, and the pain likely triggered another Raynaud’s episode. Blood vessels constricted. My toes turned to stone. Yelping, the next thing I remember was blinding bright light.

I was ranting find the fucking bandages because I’m precious like that. I was sure all the white bedding was ruined and kept my eyes tightly shut. My groggy groom has seen this panic before. He searched the sheets for bloody gauze, recovering and securing what had come undone.

The episode resolved, and the wounded bride slept without dreaming.

On this new morning, I’m somehow new. I can sense a Holy Mystery alive and moving. I cannot explain any of it. I’m in it this very moment. Still somewhere in healing’s messy middle, the Mystery’s relentless love pursues me, utilizes every ordinary thing in this little life.

Love animates the actions, thoughts, and emotions I surrender to it. Love joins the wild synthesis of my imagination to remind me who I am. Love connects me to a larger love story unfolding.

Across the miles in Boston, a baby named James is in deep sleep, dreaming of moonlight ladies as he recovers from a second open heart surgery. He already died once on the table. They brought him back. How many resurrections are happening under our noses? We love him so we pray and we ache with his delicate state.

Hearts have begun to appear everywhere for me.

Beauty comes to thinning air. Then to the shadows where the light sinks deeper. Defenses lower and priorities shift. Forgiveness blooms, and the heart in my erring flesh becomes a servant. This servant is listening.

Maybe it isn’t hearts that appear for you. For my friend Eileen, who lived loud with breast cancer, consolation appeared in four leaf clovers. For a contemplative mystic teacher at Wisdom School (yes, Wisdom School is a thing, and incidentally, she never found my questions or laughter helpful to the cohort), for her, it’s the feather of a particular woodpecker.

Magic meets us where we are.

I’m doing somatic experiencing work at the moment, and what I sense from deep, activated, embodied parts of me isn’t power as much as cooperation. Complex cooperation with elegant simplicity. It’s humbling. With these odd exercises, cranial nerves activate, and my nervous system calms.

Where do subtle energies moving through flesh and spirit originate? I imagine unseen realms where ache and joy swim together in a sea of creative mercy. A generative ocean flowing and growing in spite of my fluctuating awareness, capacity, and resilience. I imagine realms of mercy like musical scores holding all things together with rhythm, with soul. Harmonies so rich and expansive, there is always always room for more notes and more voices.

My spiritual container may have started out with Sunday School stories about Lazarus and paintings of a blonde surfer Jesus, but Mystery, music, and mercy proved too expansive for just one heavily reinforced box.

I long to break through boxes and barriers that separate me from you. Politics. Allegiances. Religion. Language is often inadequate. Many of us remain too tightly bandaged, keeping light at bay, trying to heal in tender places alone.

Spiritual containers evolve and vary. When I mention Christ or a Little Christ or the Cosmic Christ to my heartful son Jake or my hilarious son Luke or my pragmatic husband, it’s a small miracle when somehow there is shared recognition. This sets my heart aglow.

Most days I feel scattered and prone to wander. But I am learning right where I am that the wholeness I have longed for since childhood is securely hidden. When Cynthia Bourgeault says heaven is not later, it’s lighter, I feel it down to my soul.

A gloryland of ageless perfection somewhere above the clouds…is this the resting place of wholeness? Blissful days of eternity where we feast at a dessert buffet and breathe air fragrant as Maui? Is this where Love is headed?

Because surely Jesus was not gazing away from earth when his lips said “feed my sheep.” Surely Christ comes in deep greens and blues to Boston hospitals where open-hearted babies still dream.

I’m not special, well-read, or well-bred so I have questions. My lonely soul forgets that wholeness is about community. Even a community of immigrants in a young country split in two. Could the split be the beginning of wholemaking if we’re living in an upside down kingdom?

Am I already whole? Already enough? I only know I am up and trying. Without strong health or certainty, I’m beautiful. Without evolving all that well, I’m majestic. Wounded, permeable, and decaying, I’m vast and ever expanding with the universe. Heartbreak keeps happening because I’m vulnerable yet sustained.

It’s all too much paradox to hold when you are not a goddess. But since I don’t want to be a higher power, maybe I can relax. Just now, let me be finite yet flowing with the infinite God I love. Flowing, not ARRIVING, see? Falling, bleeding, cursing, praying, and singing as a full, fleshy expression of love on earth.

I don’t wanna move mountains. I just wanna love them and be loved right where they are.

P.S.

Right here. Right where i am, I’m getting it wrong. I’m getting it right, pivoting as necessary, and feeling my way with pierced and healing fingers of faith in the darkness.

Mama loves you.