{"id":681,"date":"2014-01-05T17:24:42","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T17:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batesonline.org\/triciablog\/?p=681"},"modified":"2014-01-05T17:24:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T17:24:42","slug":"jan-5-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciabatessmith.com:443\/index.php\/2014\/01\/05\/jan-5-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 1-5-14 &#8211; Heart Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>&#8220;The answer that I give my brother is what I am asking for.\u00a0 And what I learn of him is what I learn about myself.&#8221;\u00a0 ACIM (CH31:II)<\/i><\/p>\n<h2>\u00a0Happy Sunday!<\/h2>\n<p>On Friday Peter and I had a fight and something happened.<br \/>\nWe fought outside in the snow.\u00a0 I cried.\u00a0 I yelled. I felt such hurt I could not think of how we could get past this.\u00a0 I just didn&#8217;t want to deal with feeling this way anymore.<br \/>\nBefore I had left the house for work Peter had said he was sorry.\u00a0 At that time I couldn&#8217;t accept it or say it back.\u00a0 I could only still feel my hurt and anger.\u00a0 I was into playing the blame game.<br \/>\nThe thing that was different was that I had a pain in my heart.\u00a0 It felt bruised and tender. As I went throughout my day, each time my focus came back to my heart I felt the bruise and thought I would cry again.<br \/>\nI know from my lessons that forgiveness is required of me and of him. I was not ready to put aside the blame as I drove into work, but I was ready to understand.\u00a0 I asked the Holy Spirit what I was doing wrong, How do I communicate?\u00a0 \u201c<i>Honesty\u201d<\/i> was the response I received.<br \/>\nI thought about my intentions, about my behavior and how I didn&#8217;t say why I chose to act as I did.\u00a0 I realized that I went out into the situation with expectations about how I thought it should be and with my expectations on how I thought he would behave.<br \/>\nHonesty and expectations were the two words held in my mind through out the day.\u00a0 I could not fathom how I would get to forgiveness but the pain in my heart told me I had to try to get there.<br \/>\nWe spent the evening together like a normal Friday night. I just felt sad.<br \/>\nBefore going to sleep I committed to reflecting on my words of guidance: honesty and expectations.<br \/>\nI knew I was wrong to go into a situation with expectations, but where did they come from?\u00a0 They came from a fear I was carrying about the future that I had not been honest enough to speak about but, due to this fear, I was trying to make him change.<br \/>\nI had carried for a while the expectation of changing Peter.\u00a0 I felt ashamed of myself as I had learned long ago that you can not change other people, only yourself.\u00a0 In the spiritual lessons I have learned, you can just be the example, the light that they may be drawn to.\u00a0 The choice is always theirs.<br \/>\nI realized I had created the situation.\u00a0 My expectations and my intensions of change had created the fight.<br \/>\nI thought about my tools for compassion that I realized last week and applied them here.\u00a0 I thought about how it would feel to be on his side of the situation.<br \/>\nI thought about what I feared in him and used it to look at myself and found my fault of not being able to express love.<br \/>\nI could now forgive as I was the one in need of forgiveness.<br \/>\nSomehow through this process of reflection I felt another being there who was us as a couple, We.\u00a0 We had created the situation.\u00a0 We had made the mistake and we together give and receive forgiveness.\u00a0 We is someone special that I don&#8217;t share with anyone else and is deserving of my honor and respect.<br \/>\nMy heart felt healed and open when I fell to sleep.<br \/>\nIn the morning I apologized.<br \/>\nWe talked. I explained my mistaken expectations.\u00a0 I spoke honestly of my fears and what I had learned about myself.\u00a0 And then I just let it be.<br \/>\nLater in the day my mind wanted to go back to trying to figure out what Peter was thinking.\u00a0 With tears I stopped myself and I surrendered it to God.<br \/>\nSo what was the pain in my heart?<br \/>\nI think it was a crack, an enlargement of the opening.\u00a0 I was either going to bring in light to fill the extra space to benefit me or it would rub and continually irritate and bring pain.<br \/>\nI will hold onto the lesson of Honesty.\u00a0 A new tool given to me, to express the real me who only wants to be loving to all.<br \/>\nWith a laugh I just had come into my mind this analogy of the spiritual path being like a video game where the hero travels through many stages and challenges to be given a new tool or weapon to move forward toward the ultimate goal.\u00a0 The goal is LOVE.<br \/>\nThank you Lord!<br \/>\nNamaste&#8217;<br \/>\n<em>&#8220;For next to you is the One Who holds the light before you, so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the road.\u00a0 A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the way itself grow dark.\u00a0 And he Who travels with you has the light.&#8221; ACIM (CH31:II)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The answer that I give my brother is what I am asking for.\u00a0 And what I learn of him is what I learn about myself.&#8221;\u00a0 ACIM (CH31:II) \u00a0Happy Sunday! On Friday Peter and I had a fight and something happened. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/triciabatessmith.com:443\/index.php\/2014\/01\/05\/jan-5-14\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,33,38,39,58],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","tag-acim","tag-faith","tag-growth","tag-guidance","tag-love"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Heart Pain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"learning to love through struggle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/triciabatessmith.com:443\/index.php\/2014\/01\/05\/jan-5-14\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heart Pain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"learning to love through struggle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/triciabatessmith.com:443\/index.php\/2014\/01\/05\/jan-5-14\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Tricia Today!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-05T17:24:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tricia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/triciabatessmith.com:443\\\/index.php\\\/2014\\\/01\\\/05\\\/jan-5-14\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/triciabatessmith.com:443\\\/index.php\\\/2014\\\/01\\\/05\\\/jan-5-14\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Tricia\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/triciabatessmith.com:443\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79e63a39a2babc4be434aedcb35effb3\"},\"headline\":\"Sunday 1-5-14 &#8211; 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