Category: Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another chapter of Grateful Heart Monday where I begin my week with a piece of gratitude to start things off on a positive note, which for today is for all those who have shown me compassion and unconditional love through all this pain and suffering I’ve been going through.

Over the past bunch of years, while I’ve seen many drift out of my life as my pain and suffering has gone on for way longer than I ever thought it would, some have remained by my side and offered me their own unique forms of compassion and unconditional love on a regular basis, which has truly helped me to keep going.

I have such an immense amount of gratitude for each of them, especially because none of them ever resort to offering me suggestions on what they think I should do. Offering me advice isn’t the compassion and unconditional love I’m speaking of. Rather, it’s more about the many acts of holding space that these individuals have done for me.

To explain, let me reference the story of Job in the Bible. There, when Job’s three closest friends show up and saw how great his suffering was, they tore their clothes and spend the next seven days in silence, mourning and praying by his side. Putting aside the tearing of their clothes, the act of sitting there in silence and simply mourning and praying is one example of holding space. It’s about just being present and allowing the person who’s suffering, to feel supported and not judged. Sadly though, as Job’s affliction wore on, his three friends moved away from holding space and instead began to resort to criticizing him, giving him advice, and telling him what they thought the problem was, which only made Job’s suffering greater.

I’ve experienced many of those types of people throughout the years that I’ve endured this pain and suffering and none of it has ever helped. But, it’s those who have done the exact opposite, who haven’t offered me anything except small tokens of compassion and unconditional love like just listening to my grief and allowing me to cry profusely, that I’m ultimately grateful for.

I’ve come to see that many of those who do offer those small tokens of compassion and unconditional love and know how to hold space are usually individuals who have gone through long periods of suffering themselves. Yet, it’s those who haven’t suffered much in life and haven’t gone through long periods of pain either, that tend to offer me unsolicited advice and can’t be bothered with me in the long run.

That’s why today I’m dedicating this Grateful Heart Monday entry to all those who have prayed for me, sent me encouraging poems and uplifting quotes, given me cards and small gifts, embraced me tightly, held my hand, given me a reassuring touch, taken me out for a meal or coffee and just listened to me talk about my pain, or found other unique ways to uplift me even through all my despair. As it’s through all those acts of compassion and unconditional love where you have held space for me and that alone has brought me plenty of gratitude and enough to keep going for another day…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday where I begin my week with inspiration by writing about a single piece of gratitude, which for today is for someone named Jeff Foster, who I only recently came to know his name through my friend David when he sent me something Jeff wrote that truly connected with my soul.

While I normally would talk about what it was that precisely inspired and filled my soul with plenty of gratitude, I decided it would be better to just re-share Jeff’s words and simply say this. For once, I read something from someone else that made me feel like maybe I truly was on the right path with all this pain suffering that I’ve been going through…

Here are the words from Jeff Foster:

One of the most dangerous spiritual myths we have inherited is that healing is supposed to ‘feel good’. 

No. Sometimes our discomfort actually intensifies as darkness emerges into light, as unconscious material makes its way into present awareness, as our old illusions burn up in a fever of healing. 

Perhaps our discomfort is not wrong, a mistake, or a sign that we have lost our healing path. Remember, the presence of pain today may actually indicate that our healing process is intensifying, not stalling; that we are actually more awake and sensitive than ever now, less numb, less willing to turn away, more in touch with our sacred vulnerability. 

There is such a tendency in our culture to avoid discomfort of any kind, distract ourselves from it, label it as ‘wrong’ or ‘negative’ or even ‘unspiritual’, meditate or medicate it away. Much of our Western medicine is geared towards the removal of symptoms, the silencing of disruption, the numbing of chaos and the journey towards some socially acceptable ‘normality’.

But sometimes, friends, we no longer have any interest in ‘returning to normal’! The ‘normal’ was the problem, not the solution! The status quo needed to shift. It was unstable and false. Our old conception of reality was keeping us trapped and we needed to break free! Sometimes a deadening and soul-destroying ‘normality’ needs to shatter into chaos and crisis; our pain and sorrow, frustration, exhaustion, fear and doubts need to be felt more fully than ever before, and the heart needs to break open more completely. 

So, let the winds blow, let the tempests rage, let all that is false be purified, let all that is dead remain dead, let life explode where you are! You are only being invited now to a deeper healing, friend, even though it feels like you’re getting ‘worse’, even though the heart is tender and raw, even though you cannot yet feel your tomorrows! 

Soon you will rise like a phoenix!

Thank you, Jeff, I’m truly grateful for you and your words today, as they gave me an immense amount of hope to continue on for yet another day, as I trudge this road to a joy-filled destiny with God…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

 

Welcome to another chapter of Grateful Heart Monday where I begin each week writing about a single piece of gratitude from my life, which for today is for one of my readers, Jean-Marie. But before I tell you why I’m grateful for her, I think it’s important to say I’m also extremely grateful for all the rest of my readers as well, especially to those who found spiritual connection and healing from any of my words and took the time to let me know.

You see, receiving positive comments from readers often helps me to keep writing, as writing day in and day out for over five years now has the tendency to frequently feel quite arduous. Sometimes it really takes a lot of energy to even sit down at my computer to write something, particularly when my levels of pain and mental anguish are utterly high. So, receiving positive feedback is something I don’t take for granted and something I tend to use to motivate me on those difficult health days to keep writing.

Nevertheless, given that I also made a commitment to keep writing as a way of giving back a gift I feel God gave me and as a way to help myself heal, I continue to write on a very personal level, which from time to time has deeply touched a reader, like it did most recently with Jean-Marie.

When I received her Facebook message last week in a response to one of my blog postings, one that dealt specifically with a fear about God abandoning me, I can honestly say I couldn’t place her name or how I actually knew her, other than the fact that I knew we were connected as friends on social media.

As I read her response and tried to remember how I actually knew her, I could see how she and I were much alike. Jean-Marie is one of those people who isn’t afraid to share openly about the struggles she’s facing in life and as she did so in her response, she let me know how much she related to my ongoing struggles with chronic pain, emptiness, and feeling a lack of connection with God. But, it was in something she said after that, which made me grateful enough to write about it. And while I was plenty grateful that she thanked me for my article and told me to not give up, it’s in these following words she shared with me publicly on Facebook that moved me greatly and filled me with the most amount of gratitude…

“Andrew, you have been a vessel to me. You probably don’t remember me, but I met you 8 years ago at a friend’s house which you had come to perform a guided meditation. Your God given gift touched me that day and I will never forget you opening my eyes to a better way of life. That night I put your number in my phone with full intentions of setting up another meditation. Time went on, much life happened, good and bad, 7 years went by and I became sick, my husband left for another women, house in foreclosure, just to name a few life situations. Then in one of my darkest moments, somehow my phone connected your phone number to my FB and was receiving your blogs which I had never seen before. I’m technology disabled, lol, so I’m not sure how it happened and as I scrolled through the mundane of FB posts and memes I stopped and read a blog from you. Your blog was about self-discovery and how to find yourself in the midst of turmoil. I am communicating this with you because you are completely unaware of how you have helped me get through some of my darkest times. Hence, the vessel. God worked through you to reach me and help me. My point, we don’t know his workings and do not always see how he uses ours gifts to touch other people. Your blogs, which I believe are a gift given to you from him, helped me through a time where I did not want to live anymore. And again, you had no idea!!! That my friend is God.”

So, in light of that, in the midst of me questioning whether God is still with me or not, I received these very beautiful words from a woman I couldn’t remember for the life of me, but a woman nonetheless who very much helped to remind me that I do have a purpose, even in this weakened state I often find myself living in.

I’m truly filled with an immense amount of gratitude today for Jean-Marie because of this, as she gave me a much-needed reminder that God continues to work through me, even when I think I’m totally lost and useless. It really is a beautiful thing indeed to see how a gift of writing that God gave me is also helping to bless, heal, and guide others around the world, like it has for Jean-Marie…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson