I WILL KEEP YOU SAFE

"I will keep you safe."

 

 Isn't that what all of us want to a great degree?  To be kept safe.  To know that we matter.  To know that we mean something to someone. To feel alive because someone cares.

 

We all need someone to care about us enough to keep us safe, during those times of pain, anxiety, stress, growth, undoing, loneliness, fear, anger, and illness. Without these people we would feel alone.  With them we feel alive. We need a smile on a face that walks into our house ~ our lives. A shoulder to cry on. A person with whom we can share our deepest secrets and pain. A person who does not judge, criticize or abandon. A person with whom we can dance.

 

So many people now have lives that are so full, mostly of themselves, that there is little room for anything or anybody else. Henri Novwen states it perfectly, "What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think, but our ability to love."  I will take that one step further by saying our ability to care and to have compassion and reach out and touch.

 

There is such amazing value in touch.  It is both necessary and valuable. Think how good it makes you feel when someone just holds you, hugs you, and says nothing. No relationship is possible without touch for compassion requires intimacy.  Compassion brings people together. Compassion is a mutual process. Erik Hoffer found, "It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise." When people receive compassion there is an effect on their health."

 

Looking inside at our hopes and dreams and longings, we find a place where we are most fully ourselves.  This is home.  This is our safety net.  This is our shelter from the world.  This is where we find light!

 

I have found that most people turn their light inward! Which to some degree is where it just might be needed the most.  But is it?  I find my greatest reward in using my light to illuminate the dark places in others.

 

"When I can help somebody, even one person, it makes me feel most alive." M. Paul Farmer

 

Seems to me we are losing that unconditional kind of love.  That kind of love that is overwhelming and intense and endless.  That kind of love that is a gift that keeps us safe and in many instances, keeps us sane.

 

A friend tells that he is afraid to love because he is not deserving.  I would offer to him that his enemy is his greatest teacher.  His enemy of not allowing love in.  For he indeed is worthy of the greatest kind of love.  Being numb to love puts a crack in our lives that can't be patched or repaired. 

 

"We can only really love the things we can lose. ~ Jim Wilson ~ Essayist in Nova Scotia

 

Helen Keller said it best, "Life is either a great adventure or nothing."  Don't risk wasting life, avoiding love.  Go forward with your dream.  There is more to be gained than lost when we take this risk.  It starts in the mind as a step of faith and then we find we have moved into something much larger that we didn't even know existed.

 

All of our most primal and powerful memories are sensual, touch, smell, and feeling safe. All of us when faced with the noise of life need to find those places of silence and safety.  For it just could be that this is where we will find our passion and gain compassion. A place where we will find we are all deserving, and where we are all safe. With risk there is a great deal more to be gained than lost.