When the Heart Waits

Goodness! The days fly by...I have had a great week with girlfriends at the lake and am currently ensconced in a Chicago suburb with my grandkids. On the way here I began a book given to me at the lake last week, When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd, written in 1990. If you have read any of her books (Secret Life of Bees) you know what a gifted author she is and how her style draws you in. This one is really resonating with me. She talks about change, waiting, and spiritual growth or "soulmaking".

"It's always difficult and risky to try to put soulmaking into words. In many ways waiting is the missing link in the transfromation process...waiting as the passionate and contempative crucible in which new life and spiritual wholeness can be birthed."

She describes her life as making no sense, "curled up into the frightening mark of a question." To all appearances she looked and seemed fine, but inside she was in turmoil with a "chorus of orphaned voices crying out for all the unlived parts of me."

"As a woman I sometimes felt that I had been scripted to be all things to all people. But when I tried, I usually ended up forfeiting my deepest identity, my own unique truth as God's creature."

She began her journey of transformation with T.S.Eliot's question, "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/ She wondered, "Is it possible that I'm being summoned from some deep and holy place within? Am I being asked to enter a new passage in the spiritual life - the journey from the false self to the true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self - the one God created me to be? Am I being compelled to disturb my inner universe in quest of the undiscovered being who clamors from within?"

I wrote to you in the last newsletter that I woud be blogging this month about whatever was put on my heart. I love God's synchronicity and timing. Thank you, Kim for the gift of this book and for listening to the nudge to give it to me. My universe has been disturbed and I am stepping in. I am not yet sure of what I am being asked to do but I know I will be given the grace and strength to meet the challenge.