Roll Away the Stone

Big stuff today. Talking to my therapist about this relationship and about John’s cancer. Trying to sort out what is my over-the-top fear and what is diagnostic and statistically probable in colon cancer. We were talking about that and my sense of urgency to make some peace with all of this when I felt an idea or a realization move from the center of my body to my mouth and become words.

This is what I said to her: “I am afraid that if the cancer comes back, and if he dies, it is because I allowed this relationship to be, and I’m afraid that if the cancer comes back and he dies that it is my punishment; I will lose him and I will be humiliated.”

Even as I said those words I was amazed that it was coming out of me and I knew that was the true fear. Fear not just of cancer --that will hurt him or kill him—awful all by itself—but that in some way it is a punishment of me—and that the punishment takes the form of abandonment and humiliation.

Yes, of course these are my “issues” fear of abandonment and pervasive shame. But Holy Cow---the way the fear was coming to me was absolutely Biblical.

I could see her reaction as I spoke and we both got it that this is not just a psychological issue but a spiritual and even theological issue.

But here is what is both troubling and baffling me. I did not grow up in a fire and brimstone family; no one taught me to fear a punishing God; all of my spiritual practice and professed belief is in a loving God. But these fears belong to another belief system that I have not had any awareness was operating inside me.

Have I channeled my father’s early Catholic God? Is this cultural? Past life echoes? The collective unconscious? Really, it makes me wonder and it makes me pray.

This deeply held and silently operating belief is in my way. I knew it and my therapist knew it. I said to her, “This is in the way; this is why I cannot decide and why I cannot think clearly.” She had the exact image as I spoke this fear: There is a large boulder in my path.

I knew at once that even the image was Biblical. There is a stone blocking awareness, clarity and peace. The stone is blocking my belief in a loving God and in God’s will.

Who will roll away the stone?