Recently I woke up on the appointed day of our annual girls beach outing and was………………tired. I know, it is so boring by now you’d think I’d give up on this. These were the tired thoughts: “I don’t want to go”, “I’m too tired”, “The drive is too long” blah, blah and more blah. Thankfully my daily extending love practice showed up just in time before I picked up the phone and whispered “Can we cancel?”
Here is what I noticed first: none of these thoughts felt like love. They weren’t happy, peaceful, gentle or even pleasant. They were the thought equivalent of a burr or a rock in my shoe or the kind of gas you get after eating too much Mexican food. This wasn’t tiredness as much as it was resistance. Resistance feels heavy and dense. Resistance splits me into two: I want to do it/I don’t want to do it, I love you/I don’t love you; I am enough/I am not enough. So I just sat with my now uncovered two-faced resistance disguised as tiredness and allowed it to be whatever it needed to be. I was quiet. My resistance whined. I was quiet. My resistance wandered in circles. I was quiet and my resistance sat down and balked. I was quiet and my resistance left the room. I was quiet. I WAS quiet.
Quiet can bloom anywhere, even in the middle of resistance.
I just kept extending the Love that I am and noticed the many delights and graces of the day. I had time with both daughters and my BFF; a car big enough to shlep all of us; beautiful weather and a sweatshirt for the ocean chill. We found a perfect restaurant; a perfect parking space and sat for hours soaking up the grandeur of the ocean, the sun and the sky. What was my resistance thinking, trying to get me to NOT experience this???!!!
The moral of this story is that resistance lies. That is its job. Your job is to notice this. Notice and extend another quality of love like gentleness, patience and welcome until your resistance cries uncle and joins you in the delight of your day.
