A Magic Carpet Of Love

Today I entrusted my question, Why do I find it so hard to receive? to the wise counsel of my family constellation healer.

 We changed the question to How can I nourish myself? I laid it before her on bare boards in a design of cut out shapes in soft felt material -  a magic carpet of deep primary colours representing all the beloved people in my life - moving and shifting them - a bright kaleidoscope of truth.

In the end it answered more questions....revealed something else buried there -  about the gift of my husband's illness.

For him, even at the cost of losing his mind, it has answered his soul's longing for connection - for friends.

What is your soul's longing? she asks me.

A normal life, I say.

I don't think so, she says.

 And then I see that my husband's illness is a gift for me too -  that in the receiving of it, in the receiving of all the love it has brought me has freed me somehow - to flower - to enter my soul's longing.

 Now I'm asking myself how can living in the fallout of the hell of dementia ever be something good? 

I don't truly know what it's like for my husband but it has taken this uninvited horror to force me to go beyond whatever I imagined a normal life could be. It has forced me to disarm myself -  not sure what I was defending myself against -  but I lived behind it - that glass guard - afraid what you might see - the unlovely me.

I am, of course, frequently unlovely but not pretending anymore. Today surveying my magic carpet of love and friendship laid bare before me I felt another crack in that hard screen that keeps me separated and afraid. I felt the pleasure, the humbling joy of receiving the gifts of love that are offered me so unconditionally every day.....now with my heart soft and open.