Tear down your Walls!!

Most people think of the brain as the core of a human being, housing emotions, memories and thoughts, and controlling all bodily functions. But consider this:* The heart generates 60-to-1000 times more power and electromagnetic energy than the brain, making by far it the most powerful organ in the human body.* When a fetus is in the womb, its heart forms first, before the brain.* If the heart's connection to the brain were severed, it would keep right on beating, pumping blood to the rest of the body. No other organs are capable of this.It is your heart that defines you. Your heart is the core of your being, not your brain. In the 1970s, a new branch of medicine called neurocardiology was created when scientists discovered that the heart has its own elaborate nervous system. It sends information to the brain and the body with each and every heartbeat. Fascinating new research proves the heart produces a powerful magnetic field that extends out from the body up to twelve feet in diameter. Using sophisticated magnetic measuring devices, scientists have shown that when one person is feeling love or affection for another person, their heart-waves become instantly measurable in the brain-waves of the other person. It appears the heart has its own powerful and unique intelligence, which tells us that it's not simply the organ that pumps our blood and keeps us alive. Take the large number of heart transplant recipients who've reported incredible changes after transplant surgery. There have been reports of odd new cravings, handwriting changes, musical preferences, and even strange new memories that don't seem to be their own. These are simply transplanted along with the heart, and the recipient experiences them as if they were his own, just like the heart's previous owner did. Scientifically speaking, these cravings, preferences and memories are made of energy, just as all other things around us are. Emotions are no different. Emotions like "heartache" and "heartbreak", describe the physical sensations that occur in the heart during strong emotional situations; they are made of pure energy, and named after their physical effects on the body. In fact such as "anger", "grief" and "fear," often get stuck in the body's energy field; these are called Trapped Emotions. When Trapped Emotions gather around the heart, they form what is called a Heart-Wall or emotional barrier, a protective energetic barrier created by the subconscious mind. Heart-Walls are invisible, just like ultraviolet light or the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum, but their energy is very real and quite powerful, and can have an incredible effect on people's lives. So the phrase "putting up a wall" "building a wall" actually has a basis in reality! Heart-Walls are protective, but the problem is this: the wall is made up of negative emotions- negative energy. Because of this, anyone with a Heart-Wall can't give or receive love fully, since all messages coming into the heart or going out are muffled by the negative energy of the Trapped Emotions. Someone could be sending out pure love to you, but that love has to somehow get past the barrier of "sadness" and "anger" that envelops your heart. As a result, the message gets muddled, and you can go through your entire life without feeling what it really is to love with all your heart, or even simply identify with others. You could be continually insulated from other people forever, even your own family. Heart-Walls are responsible for a host of problems. They cause depression, divorce, abuse, misunderstanding, and even prejudice, hatred and brutality. On a global scale, Heart-Walls lead to ethnic cleansing, nation against nation, terrorism, and war. Our world could be a much different place if all people could feel pure love without the muffling barrier of the Heart-Wall! Like so many of our natural defenses, a Heart-Wall can be helpful, but only in the short-term. The subconscious automatically creates the Heart-Wall to protect you from unbearable emotional pain. But until you get rid of it, your heart will be somewhat blocked and you'll be less able to reach out and connect with people - even the ones you love most. If your city is being bombed, it's a good idea to hide out in a bunker until it's all over. But you wouldn't want to live there permanently, or you'd miss out on life! The same is true for your Heart-Wall. No matter how valuable it was when created, you will live a happier, more full life when you can rid yourself of its negative energy. Releasing the Heart-Wall can truly make the difference between living a life of disappointment, and living happily ever after.

MOTHERS AND SONS...... LETTING GO.

A few years ago, I stood in the doorway of my front door, watching my 19-year-old son Cody pack up his car and personal things, gearing up for a new adventure of college and life. While he was launching himself into the future, I slipped into memories of the past. I knew it was a confident, competent, and independent young man standing there packing his car, smiling and waving good-bye, but what I saw in my heart was a quiet, quirky, tow-headed little boy.

  

On my thirtieth birthday Cody—then thirteen—gave me a miniature troll doll wearing a t-shirt that said, “Thirty isn’t old if you’re a tree.” On my Thirty-third birthday he gave me a card that read, “I know you feel like you’re getting old, but cheer up, it could be worse”—and then on the inside—“you could be pregnant!” Along with letters and cards from other family members and close friends, I have stashed Cody's gifts of twisted humor in a cardboard box on an upper shelf in my closet. Also in the box is a Melmac plate decorated with his preschool-sized handprint, and a black-and-white spotted ceramic cow turned into a refrigerator magnet. He gave me the cow for Mother’s Day when he was four years old, proudly presented after a short day at pre-school. One day in a fit of mommy frustration I slammed the refrigerator door and the magnet crashed to the tile floor and shattered.  Cody was in another room when it happened, but I knew as I picked up the pieces that it could just as easily have been his heart I had broken. I stuck all the pieces back together with a mix of Krazy Glue and tears, and for years I left the cracked cow on the refrigerator to remind myself how easy it is to hurt those we love the most.
Not all Cody's gifts to me are in the keepsake box. The little hand made clay bowl, that he painted my favorite color that he made for me several years ago, sits upon my dresser in my bedroom. The bright pumpkin orange salt shakers, with matching oil and vinegar vats I recieved from him one Christmas are still in their special place in my kitchen next to my stove.  Sometimes he has gifted me with acts of service. For one birthday he wired up my cheesy sound system and set up a CD player for me in our living room; followed by some yummy french toast and milk, rarely have I enjoyed a gift more. Just this year, my first smart phone. I swear I don't know how I functioned before that gift.
I like talking logic and life with Cody. When he tells me I ought to not do this or consider not doing that, I momentarily think of myself as his peer rather than his middle-aged mom. But that fantasy lasts as long as a hiccup, then I’m back to being a mom—which I enjoy, except for the letting go part.
Letting go. Why is it that throwing your arms around your kids and hanging on for dear life is a whole lot easier than releasing them? We work so hard to raise our kids, you’d think we parents would be delighted when it’s finally time to take a breather; but no, we want to keep those little tadpoles in our safety net forever. Only an unnatural force of will allows us to set their shimmering little selves free. I shouldn’t make it sound like every parent does this. Maybe it’s just me. I did read in a personality book that people of my stripe tend to be linked to their children “with almost a psychic symbiosis.” While I prefer to think that describes a uniquely sensitive, soulful, and mutually beneficial bond, it may just mean I border on the over-connected side of things. Fine. Did they have to make it sound like something from a psycho-thriller?
At the bottom of one of the cards Cody gave me he wrote: “Thanks for letting me grow up.” I knew why he wrote those words. Months earlier, he had flown alone to Europe to be a student ambassador. When I dropped him off at the the airport, I wanted to wait at the airport until his plane took off. We were flying him out of a town that we had no family or friends and I was driving straight back to Midland, TX from the airport. I knew that airport well enough to know that not every scheduled flight actually leaves. What if Cody got stranded? What if he had to reschedule his flight? What if he had to go and come back later? There would be nobody at home to call. He was only 15.
“I can handle it, Mom,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I’ll figure out what needs to be done and I’ll do it. This isn’t a big deal.” I knew he was right; I was clinging. So I left. But during the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Midland, I pondered that scene at the airport. Why, I wondered, did I feel so compelled to hang on to Cody? To protect him? When I got to Midland I wrote him a letter, I told him far more than any teenager would ever want to hear, but I figured if I had to torture my heart over his precious little head the least he could do was hear me out.
I told him that when a woman gives birth to a child, she knows that child is literally dependent on her for life. If she doesn’t feed and clothe it, if she doesn’t make sure it gets adequate sleep, if she doesn’t teach it not to run in the street or put its hand in a flame or drink Draino it will die. As the child gets older and learns to look before crossing the street and avoid the hot stuff and drink grape soda, the mother hovers less and less; the growing child needs increasing independence and the mother must gradually grant it (the key word being gradually). But then something awful happens in high school. The move toward independence jumps into high gear as the teenager rushes fast and furiously into adulthood. The mother who was responsible for giving that child life and then protecting it (actively, passionately, with utter devotion) is suddenly supposed to sit meekly in her rocking chair with her hands folded and smile sweetly while she whispers, Have at it, kid. I’m not sure that’s exactly how I said it in the letter, but that was the general idea.
I told Cody I was proud of his strength and his sense of responsibility and that I wanted to free him to enjoy his independence, but that I was a slow learner. Sometimes I looked at him and I saw the little boy whom it was my job to protect, and at those moments letting go seemed impossible; it was like chopping myself in half. I once read that one of the results of giving birth is that for the rest of her life a woman lives with her heart walking around outside her body. It’s true. So sometimes I squeeze more tightly at the very moment I should be relaxing my grip. I asked Cody to forgive me and to bear with me as I practiced this part of being a mom.
For weeks I had been trying to prepare myself for this moment, knowing there was far more emotion surrounding his leaving than I could handle in one brief exit scene. If I didn’t let it out in spurts along the way, I’d burst my heart standing right there on the curb. So I wandered in and out of his room. Spurt. Fingered the prom garters and pictures on his dresser. Bigger spurt. Baked oatmeal cookies and put them in the freezer. Half a spurt. Spurt. Bought him new sheets and a light quilt (then I remembered he didn’t even have a bed). Spurt. Spurt. Washed eighteen loads of laundry. Spurt. Dried them. Spurt. Folded them. Spurt. Folded more of them. Spurt.
And suddenly I wasn’t spurting anymore. My darn heart was shooting a steady stream.
It struck me as I went through my various letting go rituals that I had lived for twenty years with a delusion—a defense mechanism designed to insulate me from the unbearable thought that something awful might someday happen to my kids. The delusion went like this: If I love my kids deeply enough I will be able to protect them from all harm. I don’t mean I consciously believed this. But somewhere deep in the mushy places of my mother love I pretended it was true. I remember an image that often came to my mind when my children were little: that even if they got desperately ill, if I held them tightly enough the power of my love could infuse life and health and strength straight into their little bodies. I knew in my head this wasn’t true. I knew it was irrational. But I let it sit there in that place between my heart and my mind where it buffered me from the truth—and I was grateful for it.
But as Cody prepared to leave for College, my comforting delusion slipped out of its little wedge and I got a brief but undeniable view of my own powerlessness. It took me awhile to see the delusion. At first I just saw that Cody was moving outside the realm of my protection. I wouldn’t be able to see him. Wouldn’t know exactly where he was. Wouldn’t be able to keep everything in order around him so he would be safe. Only gradually did I admit that I had never been able to keep him safe, not really. I had just thought I could because my irrational belief had been so little tested. I worried and fretted and loved and prayed and thought that somehow that kept him safe. But I never really had that much power.
Several months later Cody came home from College in one piece, and aduring the next several years Cody has driven thousands of miles back and forth, through snow-covered mountains, rainn storms and windswept deserts, and every time, I held my breath until he reached his destination. Always worried, and calling him to make sure he wasn't getting sleepy or driving in the rain with his cruise control on. Giving him the "Mom vent".
No mother wants to think of her child battling unknown seas, whether figurative or literal. But what I know in my mother’s heart is that nothing could be more true to who Cody is than this life. His experience as a people person, his unique gift of problem solving, his love of a physical challenge, and his need to step outside the confines of his “normal” life to let God do something new within him all come together in his ever changing adventures.
While Cody was still in high school, my friends daughter left for college. I asked the friend who was president of a college for advice on being a good “college parent.” He said that kids whose parents hold on too tightly—who call every day or constantly repeat how much they miss them and wish they were home—these kids never feel like they’ve “gotten away” emotionally no matter how many miles separate them from their parents. Some of them spend the rest of their lives trying to create the necessary emotional distance. But kids whose parents let them go emotionally are free to “return”—to re-engage as separate adults in a mutual, loving relationship with their parents. For me, someone given to “psychic symbiosis” with my kids, I took my friend’s words to heart. Let them go, I kept telling myself, so they can be free to return.
Cody goes to college away from home. But he returns home often. He doesn't stay here—not physically anyway. But in a healthy way, I think he returns emotionally, and that connection remains no matter how many miles separate us now. And so I follow Cody’s life and trips on the map and on his Facebook, loving him, praying for him, and yes, worrying about him, but with every concerned thought, as with every dream and experience he sees with those blue eyes , I let him go.  And one day, he will meet a girl who he will marry and I will let him go once again, he will have babies and be happy, and I will let him go. But I will always anticipate his return, Because letting go only guarantees the return.

ARE OUR DISAPPOINTMENTS REALLY THAT, OR ARE THEY BLESSINGS FROM ABOVE?


I had bought some curtains once to place on my porch to keep the sun out of my eyes and my guest’s eyes when having guests over to eat on the front porch. When the curtains were not in use, I bunched them together and tied them. Problem is, the birds would often come in the morning times to build their nests above the pole. So, every day, I had to take their nest down, because I often pulled the curtains to and fro. This made me feel really bad inside that I had to keep pulling their nests down, I love birds and realize that they are God's beautiful creatures. However, through much meditation and prayer over this object lesson in my heart...I have come to realize that me taking their nests down each and every day is not an act of cruelty but of great love, mercy, and kindness, as well. First off, the nests being built upon these curtains are a very unstable place for them to build. Secondly, when the winds blow...it blows the curtains all over the place and could make the bird's nest fall to the ground at a later time....with the baby eggs in it! (That would be such a tragedy) As I looked to see the response of the birds at each time, they didn't understand. They were by all means disgruntled, disheartened, and discouraged. I would see them fly back with grass in beak only to find that they don't have their nests anymore. This of course breaks my heart. I wondered how many of us are just like those birds? We expend so much energy and time on building our own nests in the world....only to come back and see that all that we have been building upon is suddenly gone which leaves a feeling of dismay, discouragement, despair, and hopelessness. We are often angry at what has come about and wonder if it is even worth it to try building again what was torn down in our lives and hearts. However, the one thing that I do see that encourages me to no end is that we too, like these birds do not see the bigger picture. But God does. Just as I saw the bigger picture over the birds of what tragedy could come about….God sees it in our lives as well. Perhaps, in having our own personal nests torn down, it is, in reality, saving us from future despair on a much larger scale. These birds were given a chance to go re-build again on a foundation of stability. They were given the chance to find a place of safety to rebuild before the winds of life began to blow. God always sees the bigger picture to our lives….He sees our future. He knows what will be coming about….and maybe…just maybe, when all seems to be crumbling down around us…maybe He is truly saving us from a greater destruction and devastation in mercy, kindness, grace, and protection. Proverbs 24:3….By wisdom a house is built. And through understanding it is established. By knowledge its rooms are filled with beautiful and precious treasures. John 16:33, I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you WILL have trouble. BUT TAKE HEART! I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD! --JESUS