Returning to Myself

I started spiritual direction because I felt called to do something bold and public, ambitious. But I was feeling held back by something.

I was trying to change an institution and systems that loved me as much as they hated me. My ideals and careful attention to justice were celebrated, but the corresponding effort, work, and sacrifice were criticized.

Change is difficult when you are moving against the current. The current holds us within society's norms, mandating duty, performance, and doing everything as we should. Change is blocked when we anchor our efforts to an inner orientation and hard-won values that root us in belonging and wholeness instead of rightness. A commitment to the wisdom we hold inside means many will find you a problem when they are committed to strict rules and universal adherence. If you push for change in ways that ease oppressed bodies and threaten those who have had power to do wrong for too long, if you do it well, many will conclude that you are The Problem.

I was trying to create change in broken systems while living in a socio-political reality where some people disliked me before knowing me. Everyone seemed to be playing a role and everyone seemed interested in telling me what I should do. Everyone had thoughts as to how I should act, how I should respond, and how I should exist.

I learned not to should all over myself, but to rebuild trust in myself.

Should.

The word followed me everywhere with ungrounded demands, reactive egos wanting control, and reminders of how I should be nice even when fighting for survival.

I was exhausted from being careful about what I said and how I said it. Exhausted from filtering myself. Exhausted from trying to determine how others wanted me to respond before I had fully understood what I actually thought.

Looking back, I can see that I had made an alliance with should in exchange for inclusion.

My life had too many moving parts. It was different from what most people experienced. Transgender. Neurospicy. ADHD. Chronically aware of racism and anti-Black power in everyday conversations. Sensitive. Unwilling to go along to get along.

I was given a spirit of action that could not exist under should.

It was holding me back.

I resisted, but so many people around me believed righteousness lived there. They wanted me to believe that if I followed the right rules and learned enough of them, eventually I would become the right kind of person for them. I allowed the false authority of should too much influence over my life.

I lived inside those systems for a long time, trying to find a less violent way of creating community. Long enough that I started doing it to myself. I still secretly wanted to know what I should do because it felt safe.

Not because I was committed to obedience.

I wasn't.

Most of my life had been spent questioning authority, testing assumptions, and wandering off the approved path.

But should is persuasive.

So demanding.

Should disguises itself as wisdom.

It disguises itself as responsibility.

It disguises itself as care.

Sometimes it even disguises itself as God.

Should convinced me that someone else always knew better.

Someone else had the answer.

Someone else understood the right way to lead, love, and belong.

I started spiritual direction because I longed for a space to process aloud, dream intentionally, and discern who I was becoming. I wanted it to be different than hanging out with a supportive friend and different than I had experienced in church. I wanted a place where I could bring my whole life. I wanted to use my innate and intuitive sense of connection with the holy. I needed a place where there was a direct connection to my life and a person I could say anything to without worrying about judgment, betrayal, or invisible expectations.

In spiritual direction, we talked about experimentation. We talked about curiosity. We talked about paying attention. I learned not to should all over myself, but to rebuild trust in myself.

If something was not creating connection, I could release it. If something deepened connection, I could follow it. I could notice for myself.

That idea was far more radical than I understood at the time.

Because should had convinced me to look everywhere except myself.

Should made intuition suspicious.

Should made uncertainty feel like failure.

Should made worthiness something to be earned.

Spiritual direction did not teach me to become someone new.

It helped me remember myself.

It helped me recover trust in my own experience. It helped me discover that wisdom emerges when we pay attention to our bodies, feelings, and innate reactions.

I still struggle with should.

Every day.

We are taught from childhood to let other people tell us what is good or bad about ourselves. We are encouraged to outsource our knowing.

Sometimes I still do.

But now, through spiritual direction, I know another way.

A quieter way.

One that begins not with judgment, but attention.

Not with certainty, but curiosity.

Not with performance, but presence.

Perhaps that is what I was looking for all along.

Not the right way to pray.

Not permission.

Not certainty.

Just a person willing to sit beside me long enough to remember that returning to yourself is not selfish.

It is beautiful.