She Had to Explain

She looked in his eyes and spoke slowly. It was the clearest Erica had felt for a long time.

“This isn’t about you,” Erica said. “This is my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t take care of myself and I don’t know how to love you. I’m all screwed up on alcohol and drugs.

“You deserve better than me.”
The nurse walked into the room. “It’s time, Erica. You shouldn’t have seen your baby. It’s just going to make it harder.”

Erica handed her son to the nurse. She looked away as they walked out the door. What had helped her through her months of pregnancy was knowing that for once in her life she was thinking about what was best for somebody else.

She hadn’t prayed for a long time. She didn’t know if God could hear. “Please take care of my baby,” she said. “Whenever he thinks of me, tell him I didn’t place him for adoption because he wasn’t loved. Tell him it’s the most loving thing I’ve ever done.”

“How would you rate your pain,” the doctor asked me when I was in getting some tests done on my heart.

“On a scale of one to ten?” I asked.

He said yes.

I made a quick objective analysis of where I was. “That’s easy,” I said. “This is only a two.”

I watched the picture slowly form on the video monitor screen. It pumped and pulsed. This wasn’t just a muscle, an internal organ. It’s what all the spiritual philosophies talk about as being the essence of who we are, love, the spiritual path. This was a heart. Not just any heart. It was mine.

“Geez, it’s a miracle that thing still works,” I said.

Secretly, I was in awe.

They’re confusing. They hurt. They stretch the muscle to the limit. We have to do our own bypass sometimes, making the choices known as hard calls.

People tell us to go with the flow. But those hard calls usually require doing the opposite of what we feel and what we want, because we’re taking the time to look at the big picture instead.

They’re turning points, junctures in our lives and often in the lives of other people, too. Sometimes they’re little. Sometimes they’re huge. Only we know how to rate them on the pain scale of one to ten.

Hard calls turn our hearts from an ordinary muscle into the spirit of God.

Find yourself in a murky circumstance? In over your head? Keep screaming down a deadly path by using alcohol, or ask for help? Stay married, or leave? Let go of someone, or keep holding on? Do something you know isn’t right, or do the right thing instead? Forgive, or keep resenting? Keep going, or quit?

When one option isn’t acceptable and the other isn’t preferred, grapple, struggle, pray. Muster up energy. Get as clear as you can be on what you’re doing and why. Explain if you must. Then go ahead and make that choice.

You can look away if you need to, like Erica did. Sometimes hard calls hurt too much to watch at the time. They feel better later, not now. Feelings are important. Feel them. Get them out. But acting on pure intentions—however tiny that pure part is—is the best and most powerful use possible of our gift of free will.

It’s not just how we move mountains.

Purity is how we climb mountains and get to the top.

In any situation we find ourselves in, it’s never too late to stop being an effect and become a cause for love.

From the book: Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making It Matter