What do you do when you have unresolved issues? Isn’t the answer obvious? Resolve them. I am a “fixer”. I dedicate my time to keeping all aspects of my life in order. Usually when one fire is put out, it isn’t very long until another crops up and I’m at it again. Being a mom, a teacher, and a wife for so many years, that is what’s required in each role. That is what I’ve grown up wired to do. Then one day an issue arises that there is no resolution to. I refuse to accept that. I don’t like having a rift in one part of my life. My ducks aren’t in a neat row.
Today in yoga class the instructor marched up to the podium and announced, “Today is about living with unresolved issues.” She then went on to to say in yoga you will never have perfect poses. Everyday will be different. Some days some poses will be effortless. Another day those same poses will be difficult. Yet other poses will be lifelong work. Relax. Let them lie. Sometimes we have to learn to live with unresolved issues.
What? This was a new concept to me. Let unresolved issues lie? Learn to live with them? At the end of class she read a passage about doing just that.
“Sometimes we need to live for a while with a particular behavior, problem, or situation before we’re ready to change it.
Sometimes we have to live with it so long – conscious that it’s a problem but unable yet to solve it or change it – we can hardly bear it. We’re fully aware that we want and need something different, but the situation still hasn’t changed. The answer has not yet arrived. We worry that the situation will continue eternally and the problem will never be solved. During those times of living with a problem and the desire to solve it, we may long for the the old days, those days when our denial system was intact and we didn’t know what we were doing.
If you can’t solve it yet, if you can’t change it yet, it’s okay to live with it just as it is. Something is happening. The situation is changing. You’re on your way to change.
Trust that the waiting part of change
is necessary.
Trust that your desire for change is
the beginning of change.
Trust that each moment you are
are moving closer to the change
you desire.”
~ Journey to theHeart
I needed the permission that passage gave me to just sit quiet with unresolved issues. Permission not to work on them. Permission not to try to fix them. Permission to rest from them. Even permission to not even pray about them. It always comes back to being still and listening. This month I have worked harder at not resolving some issues than I’ve ever worked at solving them.
When I got home I emptied my jacket pockets. I pulled out a piece of writing a friend had given me the other night. The first line read:
“Do not look forward in fear to the changes in life; rather look to them with full hope as they arise”
The last line read:
“Be at peace and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations”.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie – no matter how much you want to wake them up and play with them, and ….I have written.
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