Integrating body and spirit

When I saw my SD last week and he asked me what I would like to pray for, I said I felt very scattered and needed focus. He prayed for an integration of my gifts and came up with a beautiful image of a person's gifts and talents as flowers which when looked at singly may be pretty but when integrated into a bouquet became a spectacular show of contrasting colours, perfumes, shapes and textures.

This word "integration" has been figuring largely in my life this year. Not that it hasn't in the past for I have spent the last five years trying to integrate my spirituality with my sexuality, my beliefs and thoughts with my actions and behaviour and I have been largely successful.

However, in attempting to live out my life as fully as possible, I have overstretched my limits at times and hence I find myself struggling to integrate my talents: be all things to all people in order to be Christ to the world and, at the same time, be a happy, healthy woman in the prime of her life.

Right now there is little integration between my will and my body. I find myself feeling fragile, physically and emotionally.

Tired seems to be my constant state of existence as I rush from place to activity in neverending succession.

I even struggle with turning up for my weekly W2W meeting although I look forward to it for my exhausted body would love it if I could just spend the Friday evening relaxing at home and going to bed early in order to be fresh for a busy Saturday of teaching.

I am Jacob tussling with the angel when it comes to doing what I feel is the right thing to do versus what I really want.

In accepting that the tension between the two will always exist, there is great relief. An insight that was sparked by the realization that I must accept my imperfect past, present and future in my body.

In other words, my life will never perfect, as I will never be perfect and while I should strive for perfection, if I fall short, that's perfectly alright, as long as I have tried my best to be true to myself (and the Father's will) and conducted myself with integrity - all this while respecting the limitations of my physical being.

At last Friday's meeting, we shared on helplessness and feeling trapped. While I sometimes feel trapped by my sense of right and wrong, I realized that it is in moments of utter helplessness when I cease to struggle and just rely totally on God, and that is when I experience relief and freedom.

This realization was common among the women present. Each had her own unique story to share, her own personal cross, yet when each surrendered her situation in its most bewildering, depressing and scariest moments, somehow she was liberated from fear and given the strength to soldier on.

Grace in its purest form is given when we meet Jesus face to face.

I am reminded of a verse from Exodus that encouraged me in the aftermath of a devastating break-up:

'The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.’

So instead of struggling so hard, I will stand still and let time and nature unfurl organically.