God of Abundance

Many of us--maybe most of us, I don't know--have had profound experiences of scarcity. Maybe there was not enough food when we were growing up. Maybe there wasn't enough money. Maybe there wasn't enough warmth. Maybe there was plenty of those, but there wasn't enough love or nurture or hope or peace. And even when we escape that scarcity and find ourselves surrounded by abundance, many of us still live in the scarcity we once knew.

Maybe we fear being left or abandoned and so we horde our love and horde other people's attention and affection. Maybe we fear that there won't be enough left for us, so we make sure we're the center of attention at parties or dominate conversations or refuse to give to others if they haven't first given to us. Or maybe we do just the opposite and feel like even when abundance is offered, there can't be enough for everyone so we'd better sacrifice our portion for someone else--be the martyr who goes without and is always the listening ear or the shoulder to cry on, but never the one who receives. Or perhaps we settle for abusive or damaging relationships, sure that nothing better could be out there. Or maybe we fear not having enough food or clothing again and so we horde our money, saving up "just in case," investing, fretting over our retirement accounts. Or maybe we feel guilty for having abundance. Maybe we feel like we don't deserve it and so work and work and work to prove that we're worthy. However we do it, it seems to me that most people are operating out of an inner sense of scarcity, even when there's abundance around them.

I know this is true about me.

A few days before I left for Trinity House, I had a trauma-therapy appointment. During the appointment I had a vivid image of a vampire sucking life out of me to feed her hunger, to fill her dead and collapsed veins. I could see the scarlet bite marks on my neck, feel the blood slowly draining from me. I could see the whiteness of my skin as the life drained out, leaving me pale, shriveled, empty.

And I realized that's very much how I felt as a kid and a teenager.

My mother--when I was growing up, her inner landscape was as dry and barren as they come. I don't think there's any part of her that hasn't experienced starvation, that hasn't known emaciation. And out of this brittle, exhausted land I grew.

She lived through her father's death by suicide or, possibly murder. She suffered abuse by her step-father, neglect by her mentally ill mother. She was hungry, poor. She--the oldest child--was the one to open the door when debt collectors came knocking. She was the one who took care of all her little brothers and sisters after her step-father assaulted them. She was the one to provide love, safety, for those kids. And she was only 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. She was a child and she raised her brothers and sisters. And by the time she got to me, she had been violated, sucked dry.

My mom, my poor mom--I imagine her carrying around inside her something like the hottest, driest desert--bones bleached by the sun, pounded into sand that stabs and stings those few straggling survivors as the winds tear through, whipping up the desert, with no trees, no mountains, nothing to soften its ferocious howling.

When my mom became pregnant, she says, it was the only time in her life she was free from depression. She was joyful. It must have been such an experience of life and abundance in the midst of a world that had been so barren. She must have felt so full. She says that when I was born she was so happy to have me. We were so close. She wanted a child more than anything.

But then...then I started to grow up. I started to separate. I moved away from our symbiotic mother-infant oneness. And she panicked. She could not see that I was getting bigger. That there was more of me to love, that the more I moved away from her the more I became me, and that the more of me there was, the more love there was to give and receive. She could not see that. She could only, once again, feel her hunger, her starvation, the losses, the barrenness--all those things that had been soothed by my soft, clinging, warm infant body and self that totally folded into her and made her feel whole, known, loved--finally. She felt all that pain again. I imagine it must have felt like dying to her--reencountering all of that loss again, that loss she'd momentary escaped as she sunk into our sweet, total intimacy. And as I moved away and she re-encountered her wounds, she got lost in her own barrenness, in her own hunger. And she decided I must be the reason she was so very, very emaciated...so very hungry, that her whole being felt ravaged by starvation. And she began to hate me. She projected all of that onto me, communicated in so many ways that the desert in her soul was my fault. I had robbed her of life.

We had moments--sometimes years long--of reprieve from her wounds. And I got to experience beautiful parts of her that smell of honeysuckle and apricot perfume, that taste of homemade candy, parts of her that taught me to love the wind caressing my face, to notice the shimmering of light on the translucent threads of a spider web, that taught me to dream in fairytales. But always her wounds came back. And the more I separated and got bigger and fuller, the more she seemed to hate and resent me, the more she could only feel her own scarcity and resent any abundance I experienced. And soon she seemed to become vampiric--sucking life out of me, telling me that there wasn't enough for both of us. There wasn't enough air. There wasn't enough love. There wasn't enough time. There wasn't enough affection. There wasn't enough life. And I was taking up what she needed to live. I needed to feed her. I needed to hold my breath so there was enough air for her. My presence, my bigness, my need for air, water, sun, light, love, hope, joy--they were a threat. My presence--my separate being--meant less for her, she thought. And so I learned to pour myself out into her. I learned to breathe as little as possible. I learned to ask for as little as possible. But I could never shrink small enough, give enough. Because how could one little girl ever give enough to heal wounds so very, very large? And soon some part of me felt that my very existence simply caused pain, lack, scarcity, barrenness, pain, and violence.

I went to Trinity House, still full of that vampire image. The physical scarcity I experienced there, coupled with the lack of emotional space (the Catholic workers were understaffed and had been really sick that summer and so were stretched too thin), hit me hard. It reminded me of the areas of barrenness and scarcity in my own inner landscape.

I spent a day on retreat during my time at Trinity House. I went to a nearby chapel and soon found myself on the floor shaking violently, sobbing hoarsely. In this place--quiet, simple, peaceful, and still--my sobbing, aching, furious little girl came screaming out. I hit the pillows on the floor as I yelled. I shook some more. I writhed. I felt my fury, my pain, at having grown large and abundant only to have life sucked out of me, only to be told that my bigness was taking what others needed to live, that I was selfish, greedy because I wanted to live, to be loved. I wanted rain and sunlight. I wanted to grow. I wanted to know that my existence was good--a gift, an abundant gift.

As I calmed down, as my hoarse sobs became quiet sniffles, I curled up in a ball and let myself sink into the solid ground beneath me. I felt the cool air drift over my exhausted body, my body over-heated from all the rage and pain that had come screaming out of me. I listened to the silence, to its bigness. And I felt as if God spoke to me.

"Do you believe all of creation rejoiced when your daughter was born? Do you believe every cell cried out with joy?"

And I answered without any hesitation, "YES! And if it didn't, it should have. Her existence is so very very good that no joy could ever express it--not even the rejoicing of every galaxy."

"Well," I felt God say, "That's how I feel about you."

And I believed it.

I believed it.

I felt it.

And I let myself grow a little larger, a little bigger.

I let myself soak in love and joy big enough to heal at least a little bit of my pain.