My Forever Echoes in the Dark

September has been...a tricky month. My heart has been sad, a lot. There's been a lot that has happened, especially in the last couple weeks, that has brought me to awful moments of tears and vulnerability, and I am just...exhausted.

There was lots of good in this month, weddings and birthdays and small joys like hockey games and packing boxes for my move and so on, but there's also been a lot of hard, sad stuff for me and for people I love very much.

It's hard, sometimes, to make room for hard sad awful feelings. It's so easy to just convince yourself that you can go and feel it later, that you have to shove it into a box and paste on a smile and keep going as if nothing is wrong and nothing hurts. After all, no one wants to sit with us in our sad, right?

One of the things I am really coming to value this week is the idea of just...sitting in the quiet with someone. Sometimes you don't need to have words. Sometimes, it's okay to not want to talk about things all the time, to just sit and know someone else is there, but that there's no expectations you *do* anything or solve anything or discuss anything.

'Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that "humanity is bowed down with trouble, sorrow and grief, no one escapes; the world is wet with tears; but, thank God, the remedy is at our doors. Let us turn our hearts away from the world of matter and live in the spiritual world! It alone can give us freedom! If we are hemmed in by difficulties we have only to call upon God, and by His great Mercy we shall be helped." (Paris Talks, pp. 109-110) So....maybe I can sit with God, quietly, and feel rested, too. 

A lot of this week, I've been trying to reframe my prayer and contemplative time (where I read the Writings, or other Baha'i related books, etc) as just...me sitting quietly with God and Baha'u'llah. I don't always have to say stuff, They know what's in my heart, and why I'm feeling the way I do, but it's quiet, and contemplative, and I can just exist, quietly, and breathe for a bit. I know the world will come back full force and require my attention again, but for those moments, it's okay that everything's not okay. 

My husband and I talk sometimes about how it's okay to just...need to be a lump in the blankets, to not be social so much and just want to cuddle quietly or just sit in the same room, doing our own things, knowing the other person is there if we need them. I've really come to value that, lately. It's not that we don't love each other enough that we're avoiding each other, it's that we love each other so much that we know that sometimes, we just need someone to sit with us, to let us be where we are and feel whatever we're feeling. 

So, dear friends, I ask the same of you. Check in with the people you love and care for. Ask them if they'd like to talk, or do something, or if they'd just like to sit with a cup of tea in the silence with you. Lean on each other. Love each other. One of my favorite illustrations from a Frog and Toad book sums this up nicely: 

Sometimes, that's all you need.