Ask For What You Need. Pray Big. Live Epic.
Where did this poverty mindset leak in?
As if there’s nobility in lack, a false sense of surviving fuels an arrogant mentality that I don’t need to ask for what I need. The incongruence in my life causes me to constantly work so as to manifest abundance. Where did this neutrality, this canceling out of my actions, sink into my belief system that causes self-sabotage and small living?
Perhaps it’s a viewpoint that God is this disgruntled dispenser of justice, angry because I’ve sinned or fallen short of his glory. I hear the religion in that statement and my gut churns and my heart saddens from those ingrained teachings that stalk my soul into a depressive state of nothingness.
Perhaps the universe is dispensing it’s greatness only in portions, like a single pie on Thanksgiving, there is only enough for the chosen few, the rest of us, we only get to smell, see but never really experience the goodness of the creation. So we live on, coping, tolerating, wishing and hoping that one day, one day surely it will be our day!
Careful not to rebound into the Happy.
As the tears form, I feel this nudge between my two shoulder blades as if my skin is opening. With shoulders trembling, my head bows in reverence only to have this rise come from below my feet like crossing an air vent on a busy urban street. With slight invigoration, partial fear and unbounded curiosity, my lungs expand in short spurts to finally reach fullness as an unfolding violently takes place.
The first of many appears. I bend in torment, pain wreaking from my bones as the next one, then the next, then the next emerges before finally letting out a scream begging for mercy. Like a flower blooming in the sun, the wings behind me unfold with a startling sound buckling my knees to the floor. I wipe the sweat from my brow, take a deep breath and my wings reveal a span of breathtaking greatness that inspire my last burst of strength to stand and be seen. I have wings. We all do.
To ask for our needs takes humility combined with a faith-filled belief that there is an unlimited storehouse of knowledge, provision and abundance eager to be found and dispensed. Like finding hidden treasure along an afternoon walk, we don’t deserve it, we don’t earn it, we just receive it in gratitude that everything that is happening around us, even the pain, especially the pain, is there for a reason! Like a father teaching his son to ride a bike, this life gently guides knowing an occasional skinned knee will better our abilities and quicken our resolve to grow and reach beyond our grasp.
Oh yes, I’ve grieved. Sure, I’ve suffered. We men walk proudly with our infliction, our wounds scabbed over from the salve of this universe’s constant soul therapy to know this:
It is the man that knows the pace of himself, that can find the oneness in all things among all the messages of separation to become fully actualized in who he is.
Like so many fine wines that slept quietly on their shelves, patiently allowing the curator to replace the corks, men move into a place of beauty within themselves, finally accepting patience is needed for us to become full and live as men.
Today. Just today, perhaps even moment-by-minute, I will ask for what I need. I will believe with faith. I will pray boldly. May you too live on with strength and honor, just for today.
~Robin
