Seeing Clearly: The Worth of Truth

Last summer (2016) was an intense one, beginning with a car accident in one state that broke my aunt's neck and wrapping up with my father's funeral in another state, with a whole array of emotional and physical chaos in between.  It has taken me a year to finish and publish the post finally. I won't tell you that the healing is complete because I don't think it ever ends. There are plot twists and hairpin curves that cause us to re-evaluate the whole of everything previously lived. Last summer was precisely that as it drew into hyper-awareness of my childhood relationships and how I want them to play out in my adult life. Or not.

I learned so many things about myself, life, and relationships. This particular lesson was rather startling.

"Where your attention goes, your heart follows; where your heart focuses, becomes your treasure; what you treasure becomes what you love and worship (care for). Be very careful what you are giving your attention to. Just because it is true doesn't mean it is worthy of your attention. Just because it is real does not mean it deserves your focus."

This information came to me from my Mom, who passed in 2007, as I was sorting out a heap of dysfunctional behavior surrounding the conclusion of my Dad's decade-long battle with cancer and subsequent death.

After my parent's divorce in the ‘70s, his family had somehow managed to stay attached to my Mom. A devastating accident that claimed the lives of my Dad’s parents left him estranged from the rest of his family. This put me in an awkward place of bridging too many gaps with too much emotional debris floating around. It was brutal, and I was fraying at the edges fast, trying to keep it all sorted out and maintain everyone's boundaries and needs during the grief processes we were all experiencing.

Feeling my Mom's love and support flow to me, followed by these words, gave me a safe, stable place to work from, choose from, and decide how I wanted to experience all of these changes and shifts. In the end, some relationships did not survive. Some were voted off of my island, and some just fizzled out. But what remained was more clear, bright, and easily sustainable. The key to this little gem of mind-peace was knowing the clarity of my desire, what I wanted my attention and focus to include. Because in the end, the truth that is "worthy" is my call.

 ❦