Sacred Suffering

Let me not be like a martyr oh Lord, let this sacred suffering make me a vessel for your light always, Amen.

I am down on my knees, my face buried in the softness of my rocking recliner. Behind me Rich Mullins sings “I am ready for the storm.”

I cannot believe I am here again, my gut on fire, a deep stricture in the left quadrant of my pelvis.  I feel as if someone is driving a hot poker through this area and out the back of my hip, everything is on fire. I cannot breath, I cannot think, I have been thrown to the ground once again by God.

Weeping and praying, I hear, “Be still, go quiet, you must commune with God as much as possible now, for this is a sacred process that is happening.”

Four years ago, my gut stopped working, suddenly in the middle of the night. Down on my knees in pain, sweating, not understanding at all what was happening.

Nine months of tests, doctor’s appointments, procedures, I.V.’s so many that after a while my veins would roll away when the nurses attempted to place the I.V.’s in.

One day walking back to the car from another medical appointment the ocean wind blew across my face, lifting my hair. I began to cry, I realized I had not smelled the ocean breeze for over 8 months.

Two major operations later everything appeared to be back on track. My gut appeared to be healed, the processing system was functioning well.

Then like a nightmare one year ago my gut, my processing system began to slow down again. I panicked for cancer of the stomach, colon and pancreas run like wild fire through my mother’s side of the family. I could not believe that God would put me through hell again.

The answer was yes. This hot rod of pain would began to set fire to my gut sometime during the day and by nightfall I was out of my mind from the pain.

Four months later, on the phone with a dear friend, we were talking about deep spiritual matters. We were discussing my work and the next step for my ministry. I hear myself say, “Yes, I am ready, I want this. Only thing is I will have to face this “stricture”….. The breath goes out of my body, a cascade effect that always happens when I have a euphony goes off. I see/know at that moment EXACTLY what is happening.

I believe that for every physical malady or illness there is a corresponding emotional or energy connection.

Quite a bit of time ago I let go of the “wrongness” of illness. That I was doing something wrong to have created this illness.

I have come to know that yes my body can be attempting to voice to me a block, or a manifestation of a fear or emotion that I did not know about.

This was a gift. The deepest of my fears, the terror of being seen, of being free, of surrendering fully to the magic of my life was manifest in a stricture in my colon. I had a choice I could painfully suffer physically, tight and frightened. Or, I could surrender to the sacredness of this experience.

I would still have my tears, my anger, surely this pain is very physically real. Could I know then, that in this painful place what stood in my way was being resolved?

This experience was answering not only my deepest prayer, it was setting up an unexplainable development, the creation within myself of my teachings. The premise of who I am, what I believe, how I serve, demanding I root my deep faith in the creator. My request every day is this.” God, allow me to be your true oracle always.”

Years ago when Sandra Dolan did my Soul Portrait she said to me “I am turning your eyes upward, for you are always looking towards God for your answers.”

Here it was, the final constriction my life. I had a flash of my ministry, my need for deep prayer and meditation. This was the only way to stop me in my tracks and in a multitude of ways. Create true completion. I was becoming a true example of faith.

It has been said “Everything happens for a reason.” Two weeks before this euphony. I had two painful memories ride out of my heart into my conscious, both memories I thought I had already resolved via all the therapies and modalities I have used over the years to help heal me.

These two memories were heralders for the conversation with my colleague. One memory was my being laughed at by a room full of adults, these people laughing all at once, a spontaneous combustion of ridicule, rejection. I was being let go from my first job, and as I turned to walk down the side isle to leave this large room. These people, these adults laughed. They never spoke about laughing at me, they just did it.

The second memory was when I was six years old. I had, as many children do transposed my 2’s writing the number backwards. The teacher at the time, a not very nice woman. Or perhaps a woman assigned to me to start a karmic burn off, so that I would understand suffering so deeply that the river that I carry in compassion, love and furious strength would be developed and mastered.

The “teacher” seeing that my two’s were backward, and I arguing with her that they were alright proceeded to send every one of my classmates to walk by my desk holding up their worksheets showing me how the “2” should look like, The teacher saying “ Look, see, you are doing it wrong.” I was so humiliated, I wept openly in front of the whole class. This began to develop in me the belief in my not belonging, anywhere.

These two memories of many memories showed me the basis of my terror of taking the next step in my life.

This stricture was “helping” me find the subtle root issues, which were my having to deny intimacy and commitment.

Commitment and intimacy. Where one begins and another ends is impossible to say. Surely commitment and intimacy are connected twins, part of the eternal eight process.

For, what I have shared with you about my life, is not only my life. These memories, this suffering is collective. We suffer tremendously from the stricture of having to hold back our innate ability to be intimate. We struggle with this driven expression that demands expression of joyous commitment to life.

You may relate this to a project you are wanting to create, or a relationship you are in. I offer you a different perspective. That this sacred suffering is from our having to withdraw our smile, our interest, our belonging, causing a stricture. A stricture in our love, our hearts, our lives.

A stricture that has made us want only to go home, forgetting why we have come here. We have been born into the times of the great resurrection of the song of life. It is during this time that it is so very important that we become very, very healthy, not only emotionally, mentally, energetically. The most important place for now is physically. For the coming times will demand our ability to stand tall, to be physically strong. To remember and know how to take care of ourselves and each other, physically.

This stricture that set into me the terror of love, is being spoken about through my physical body. So that this stricture may released, resolved and taken into the heavens. This is true ascension, the going back to whence it came this suffering which becomes sacred when we “get” its reasoning.

From any sacred suffering when faced with true willingness creates freedom.

Yes, I have spent many night crying this pain away, yet with each step forward I am given an equal amount of support.

This sacred suffering that you are going through in anyway has an answer to it. Listen, breath, be still, for surely something sacred is happening.

Lay your head down in the lap of the divine mother, let her stroke your forehead, your hair, and tell you how much you are loved. Come now join us, we are walking towards the great resurrection. And we give praise for all this “SACRED SUFFERING.” We anoint it and lay it to rest at the feet of the divine

Come, come this way, as we bring the dream back to the earth.

~ Amaya Victoria