On Mindful Monday, my readers and I practice the art of pausing, TRYING to be still, or considering, ever so briefly, the big picture. We’re hoping this soul time will provide enough peace of mind to get us through the week!

As I mentioned on my Ash Wednesday video, I am dedicating each Monday during Lent to one of the six practices of simplification that Abby Seixas writes about in her book, “Finding the Deep River Within.” The third week of Lent, then, is about “befriending feelings,” or getting cozy with all the uncomfortable stuff going on inside that we distract ourselves from with our busy schedules.

I am convinced that there is some wisdom here, because every time I close my computer and go offline for a week or longer I come away with more than a few important insights … like I don’t really need to be doing 75 percent of the stuff on my to-do list, and that spiritual author Henri Nouwen wasn’t lying when he said that “somewhere deep within our hearts we already know that success, fame, influence, power, and money do not give us the inner joy and peace we crave.”

But it’s always painful. That awkward silence. I hate it, really. Which is why I try to avoid it by staying busy.

I suspect my pain is just like yours. On some level I feel unloved.

It’s that simple.

Although I’m trying to toss off all the heavy baggage that my inner child shows up with each day to the landfill of faith and healing, I’m not yet resilient to the blows that come my way, and the tender parts inside my heart are still way too vulnerable.

I used to feel pretty pathetic for feeling unloved, but now I know that I’m in the company of almost everyone inhabiting the planet Earth, whether they choose to articulate the pain or not. In a recent compilation of reflections collected after his death called “Home Tonight,” Nouwen writes:

There was a time in my life when I became focused on how my parents had wounded me and I remember wishing they had behaved differently. Listening to others, however, I saw how they too experienced times of feeling primarily hurt by parents, partners, relatives, friends, or those in their church community. Isn’t it true that we have been hurt because parents and others were unable to reflect unconditional love to us? Perhaps they held on to us too tightly or seemed to push us away. They wounded us not because they wanted to wound us, but because they also were people who were loved imperfectly. We are not meant to stop of simply feeling the pain of these wounds, nor are we to become stuck in guilt or accusations. Rather this whole experience is to move us toward accepting a relationship with God’s living Spirit of Unconditional Love. Our spiritual journey is nothing more than a return to the intimacy, the safety, and the acceptance of that very first relationship with Love, that is uniquely present and at home within each one of us.

For me the beauty in Nouwen’s reflection is found in his humble acknowledgement that he’s still not there. I suspect he didn’t even have the “feeling unloved problem” solved on the day he perished. Even though he accepted all the love in his life with gratitude and knew the warehouse of love and acceptance was owned by the guy whose name is DOG spelled backwards, he still frequented those corners of woundedness, where he grabbed for needy relationships, hoping they could fill in the gap, at least temporarily.

They didn’t of course. Explains Nouwen, “My difficulty is that when I feel the hurts I go looking for love externally from other wounded people instead of claiming and communing with the One who knows me, loves me as I am, and makes a home in my heart.”

So we charge down the road of healing and forgiveness one step at a time, trying to choose “true homecoming” whenever we can. Nouwen gives us some directions for this path:

We acknowledge the good and painful in our lives and we ask for patience and courage to forgive all those who have wounded us on the journey. Their love was limited and conditional, but it set us in search of that unconditional, unlimited love. This way takes us on a path through the desert of suffering to our hidden wholeness and to our utter beauty in the eyes of the One we name God.

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