Untethered surrender.

I sat in a sermon weeks ago and my Pastor asked each of us what was keeping ourselves from losing ourselves in our lives. God, work, relationships, parenthood, etc. He gave us a post it note and encouraged us to write down the one thing that kept us from loving that thing wholly and completely. Mine was easy. It’s fear.

I wrote that word down, worshipped with all of my might, forgot about it for a little while, and revisited it. Do I truly love with all of myself? Do I set conditions upon things that aren’t concrete and tangible? Do I surrender myself to the elements which are lofty and abstract? I like to think that I do, but I don’t really think that I do.

I am super great in business. It has been my one constant in life for the past 20 year and thank God, it has been unwavering. I understand it. I go to work every day and I know that I am going to hustle and I have my little to do list and I check everything off (mostly) and I do it all over again the next day. It’s not scary to me because it has never let me down. It’s the one absolute palpable thing in my life that I’m really good at. Relationships on the other hand? Different story.

My love for words came about at a very early age. I remember feeling my life spin out of control at a certain age and I sort of got lost in written word. I felt comfortable in the scientific and romantic ideals of philosophers such as Nietzsche and Descartes and I read about them incessantly. I learned that words were certain. When my life seemed to twirl into a complete oblivion, those pages never failed me. I read them literally and exactly. As I got older, I started painting. I went from perfectly scripted landscapes to completely uninhibited abstract and it was then, and only then, that I got lost in the unknown. I started to feel a little bit alive.

Relationships are my most feared things in the whole wide world. They are so full of uncertainty and I can’t understand the hell out of them. I carry this wall. I sometimes think it’s going to take a strong person to knock it down or at least chip away at it, but in reality, they will not alter it in the least. I am completely tethered by fear. I love the human experience, don’t get me wrong. I love people in their entirety. I love the mistakes and the risks we don’t take and the love we love and everything in between. We are such a fascinating species and I could watch the interactions all day long without an ounce of sleep. Relationships to me are far from absolute and they scare me to the core.

I find myself looking at that post it note every single day and reveling in the concreteness of the word: FEAR. There are so many absolutes in life. Life and death. Sickness and health. Right or wrong. I am learning to let go of the restraints of words and the absolutes and learning to love with all of my might, despite myself. To love something so much, so untethered and so freely, is the absolute most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. I pray that everyone gets to experience that in some form in their lives. Me included.