Dreaming With Open Hands

I nearly fell to the floor of the shower. Hunching my body over into child’s pose with hands extended, palms up, palms open. I’ve been striving, and reaching, and going a hundred miles a minute, and all in a moment I knew it needed to stop.

My body felt sick. My eyes itched. My nose ran. My stomach turned. My muscles ached. It was trying to tell me something and I hadn’t been listening.

All week I had feared if I stopped I wouldn’t be able to get going again. I didn’t want to process. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to keep moving. And it was catching up to me.

I stayed there for a long time with the water pouring over my back.

I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to grasp and strive. I don’t want to seize back the control that I struggled so long to surrender. I want to live with more grace. I want to live with open hands. I want to continue to dream and work towards those dreams, but not from a place of desperation or urgency. I want to step towards my dreams with an attitude of curiosity and openness instead.

Lately I’ve had a lot of dreams. I lot of things that I want to start and do. Perhaps it’s a way for my heart to throw it’s attention into something else, other than Bryan. Perhaps it’s just the season - autumn has always stirred lots of longing in my soul.

Many of my current dreams are projects that I hope will make me an income of my own. Projects that I hope will turn into jobs of sorts. They require planning and marketing, and for the first time I have run headfirst into those grey areas that have for so long scared the hell out of me.

In the past, when I would get a new idea I’d always test it out - I’d see who was interested. I’d timidly (though also excitedly) tell a few friends and ask them if they were interested. Let’s just say that this never worked out very well. Not because my friends were not encouraging - they often were. But my timidity worked against me, their encouragement always came with caution. With my fragile sense of self and self worth, this caution usually caused enough self doubt for me to not continue with the idea. I pitched ideas timidly to friends, seeking their approval before continuing, and I know I don’t want to do that anymore.

I am finally at a place where I can recognize this pattern, and don’t feel the need to repeat it. These new ideas I’ve been brewing - I’m not doing that with them. I am stepping out in faith to pursue them, I am planning launches and valuing myself and my skills.

That being said, I realized, as the water fell around my tired body, that something was wrong. These steps to value my ideas were good steps, but they had also come with something else - a sense of urgent panic that wasn’t good. I felt this urgency to finish these ideas, to get them to a launch point as quickly as possible because I had no idea what next month would bring. I knew that I might have to set them down, abandon them, to care for Bryan, and I wanted to get as far as I could on them before that. I was in a desperate frenzy.

I bought into the philosophy of scarcity and allowed it to lead me to close my grip tightly around MY plans. I said that I was fine with whatever happened with these ideas, I said I was approaching them openhandedly, but the truth was something very different.

The water from the shower splashed onto my open palms and something broke and shifted in my heart.

Lord, I don’t want to strive for the things I can create in my own power. I only want the things you create in your grace. Lord, I don’t want to build my own tribe. I want the tribe that you build for me. Lord, I don’t want to seek acceptance from others, for my ideas or my self image. I want to seek you. Lord, I don’t want fear to drive me. I don’t want urgency and desperation to drive me. I don’t even want desire to drive me. I want to be driven and guided by the Spirit of Love.

I lay all these ideas. All these desires at your feet. Bring what you will.

Rejoicing in the journey, Bethany