A Pain in the Butt and an Unexpected Insight about Surrender and Choices

Spending weeks in bed trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt, not being able to sit or stand for more than a few minutes at a time has been a shock.  Times like these, a whole lot of fears that you either think you’ve conquered or you tell yourself you’ll sort them out one day – they rear their ugly heads and remind you rudely that that day has arrived, like it or not.

Of course, I never like it.  Lying in bed last night I was thinking about how in the last three or four months I’ve been moving in what feels like a great direction.  Spending my time, energy and resources on something that feels right.  I’d accessed enough money to last until the end of October, so I was free from that hideous stress, and it let me focus on and prioritize my writing projects.  The first draft of my e-book was done, and I had a timetable for the scripts, crime novel and bio.  I’d given myself a minimum output every day, and I was sticking to it.

Bliss.  My world felt secure for the first time in about ten years.  I had back-up, and I was focused in my work.  I joined a gym – time to get back in shape, get healthy, get strong -  was doing some photography again, getting out into the world, taking horse-riding lessons.  I was feeling normal.   I finished the first draft of my e-book, 50,000 words so far.  Waiting in the wings were my three scripts, and crime novel.   In short, I was on a roll.

Can you hear it?  SCREECHHH.  That was life putting the brakes on.   Whaaat???

It’s been 9 weeks now, and at first there were times my world felt as if it was closing in again especially in the last five weeks when I’ve had to stop taking anti-inflammatories and pain-killers because they interfere with the stuff I take for epilepsy and give me convulsions at night.  Great.  I can hardly get out, can’t stay on course, can’t even do computer work or connect with friends in cyberspace.  Scary.  Horrid.  I fought it for a while, then accepted that sometimes you just have to surrender, at least temporarily.

So I surrendered.  With bad grace, as you can imagine.  But a funny thing happened.  The world that felt as if it was closing in on me opened up in a different – and unexpected – way.  I saw how those old beliefs that I’m no good haven’t been completely rooted out, they’re still operational.  I see them the clearest when I can’t control things.  Go figure.

I’ve always hated the concept of surrender because  my interpretation of it has been that if something isn’t going the way I think it should, I have to give up on the dream.  I’ve never been able to do that.   But this time round I realized maybe surrender is something different.  Maybe it’s surrendering the idea that I have to control everything, that I’ve only got a certain amount of resources and I’ll never access any more.

More than anything maybe it’s giving up my bondage to a vicious inner critic that tells me I’m not allowed to rest if I get hurt, that I have to drive myself and control everything.  That life or God or the Universe doesn’t really like me very much, that I’ve used up all my chits for backup and support and if I blow it this time it’s over.

When it seems like my back is to the wall, sometimes the only choices that seem available – apart from having temper tantrums and crying jags – are to face these beliefs I didn’t realize I had, and to choose which ones I want to keep.  Don’t like these ones, I think I’ll toss them out.  It seems such a small thing when the machinery of your life has kind of ground to a halt.  But maybe it’s the biggest thing of all.

I found my joy returning, my desire to let go and laugh, to look for the good things in my life.   My physical world is restricted in that I can’t do what I was doing – and make no mistake I really hate that - but my mind, heart and soul aren’t, and there are other things I can do.   Edit my e-book by hand.  And my scripts.  I can still express myself and know my own power. 

I can’t play the piano, as I can’t sit, but I’ve picked up the guitar again.  Amazingly, I can play lying on my back, so I’m teaching myself all the different scales and making up fancy jazz chords.  And every now and then I can post an article here, and a blog, and connect with cyber-friends.

I’m playing around with my camera, seeing whether I can create great shots from pedestrian things – okay, well, that’s going to take a bit of practice!  I’ve also been watching Oprah every day during the week, and watching how she connects with her own joy.  That’s been pretty inspiring.  And some of the people she’s interviewed have given me a lot of faith and courage to carry on down my own road.  Because I know I’m not alone, in where I’ve come from and where I want to go.

I don’t like that this has happened and I’m not quite so spiritually resolved that I can breezily say I thank God and the Universe for it.  I don’t, ungrateful sod that I am.  I don’t like suffering and I don’t think it’s noble. I don’t want to elevate it into some kind of spiritual, mystical thing.  But I am grateful that this time alerted me to those old ideas, and the fact that I have a choice now, to keep them or throw them out.

Some things I’ve become very clear about, hanging out here in my bed:  God, the Universe, does like and me, positively; there isn’t a limited amount of back-up and support for me, there’s an abundance; I can’t ”blow it”- because there’s no such thing, there’s only learning.  And there are a gazillion chances for me.  For all of us.  As many as we need, and more.