Lately my family and I have been going through a pretty stressful time, as have a lot of families during the pandemic.  Long story short my husband’s company shut down in May due to Covid.  There has been a lot of financial upheaval, mostly because he hasn’t been able to collect unemployment due to a previous fraudulent claim on his SSN. We are making it, though.

We are almost 4 months into this ordeal so the stress and anxiety is no longer a dark cloud right in front of our faces.  It has graduated to more of a droning white noise that is always present in the background.  I can only speak for myself but I feel like I’ve found a rhythm in this opportunity to put faith into the Universe – we practitioners often talk about trusting the Universe in a theoretical way, but this has been a time to actually try it.  I feel calm and centered, albeit a bit spacey most days.

The one thing that’s been falling behind for me is my personal spiritual practice.  I can show up for clients and connect to Spirit with absolutely no issues, but personally I’ve been feeling spiritually numb.  My friends and I call it ‘hiding from God’ – and it’s like that thing a lot of us do where we forget to respond to a text or email… and then the time gets really long… and now the guilt and pressure to respond is too overwhelming so you just… don’t.  It’s like that.  But with God. And when I get into that rut, I can’t tap into my intuition or hear Spirit’s guidance very clearly.

So this morning I broke down and thought, “I have to do something. I have to write in my gratitude journal.”

I opened the book and began to write, “I am grateful that no matter how ragged I come crawling back to Spirit, She always welcomes me.”

But I didn’t even get through that sentence before a voice said, “Okay, first of all, Beloved, you can’t ‘come back’ to something you never left.  You are never alone, you are always in My presence. 

“Second, you are so worried about the things you’re not doing, like journaling or meditating.  Well, darling, look at all the other things you’re not doing:  You’re not devolving into co-dependency.  You’re not relapsing with alcohol.  You’re not projecting your fears and stress onto others.  You’re not taking your stress out on your loved ones.  You’re not creating new offerings out of fear, or claiming to do things you’re not qualified to do, or casting aside your ethics just to make more money.  Please give yourself as much credit as I do for the things you are not doing.

“You have done so much work to heal your wounds and act authentically rather than from a wounded place.  Now when things are tough you don’t devolve into your wounded patterns.  So what if you are so focused on feeding your family that you don’t light a candle!  So what if you don’t make an offering!  I’m not slighted, I’m proud of you.”

I tell you, I couldn’t write at that point because the paper was wet with tears.

I share this story in the hopes it will give you permission to feel proud of the ways you are showing up in your own life, even if it’s not to the level you’d like it to be.  Please give yourself credit for the evolved ways in which you are approaching hard things.  How can you be proud of the ways you are navigating life right now?