Therapy Works: “That’s Between Me and God”
“Angels clapping” “That’s between me and God!”
I have a dear client, Felicity, who came to me overweight in body and weighted down in her sense of self. I liked her immediately and almost immediately told her so. She was flummoxed and almost certainly more than a bit leery/skeptical.
I imagine you too will feel for Felicity, as do I, when you hear that she had an overbearing father who “beat the life out of her.” A family tragedy early in her life was blamed on Felicity. Her parents divorced and when her mother remarried, Felicity experienced her stepfather as someone who intended to improve her by “pointing out her many faults.” It doesn’t leave one much surprised, eh?, that Felicity has felt desperately unsure of her value and distrustful of herself. She came to me as an adult with 40+ years of experiencing life as a place where she was “too much” and having her life energy doubted, curbed, and pathologized.
Felicity has never felt “close to God” … and who can blame her with two father figures as described above. Yet, even without a felt sense of God being kindly or close or caring, Felicity aches for experiences of genuine spirituality and connection with the divine. Felicity was deriding herself for her lackings in the area of spirituality and, in particular stated, “I need to pray more. I almost never stop and pray.”
My mind flashed to the story of Enoch in Genesis who was reported to have “walked with God” and been directly taken up to heaven without experiencing death. I told Felicity that she reminded me of Enoch. And she does! She is a woman who longs for closeness with God and who wants to live an upright, loving, life-affirming life. As you can imagine, Felicity was taken aback. “What? Are you talking about me? I almost never pray.” My response: “We may be talking about very different ideas of praying.”
I explained to Felicity that I believed that her Whole Life is a Prayer. That her daily rising and living and laying down is all done in relationship to God and with a prayerful heart. I became so enthused I summarized the times I had met with Felicity, the strong work she had taken on, her increased believe in herself, and I concluded with an allusion from the Talmud that “every blade of grass has an angel that stands over it whispering, ‘Grow, Grow.’” I told Felicity that oftentimes when she is feeling unsure of herself, I believe there are angels standing over her and clapping their wings in celebration of her brave efforts to honor the life that God has created in her. Felicity liked this image very much and quotes it with a large smile on her face often back to me. She’ll tell of an event where she acted in a new, vibrant way and say, “I know, I know, ‘Angels were standing over me and clapping’ weren’t they?!”
So Felicity comes in this week for a session and tells of making a decision to not attend Mass this weekend in lieu of a basketball tournament commitment with her son that felt like both of them would be fresher and happier without attending church as well. She reports her son was relieved and said, “Thanks a lot Mom.” But, not her husband. He made a statement I rather admire for its directness. He said, “I just have one thing to say. (pregnant pause with Felicity thinking ‘Here it comes.’) Basketball should not come before church.”
And you might be imagining how easy it would be for Felicity to crumble. Another male voice standing in for God and condemning her for being alive.
Yet, Felicity did not fully suppress her laugh of delight as she told me she replied, not without some needed anger and planted feet: “You can just leave that between me and God!”
As she reported this wonderful event, Felicity went on to describe her inner conversation: “I go on walks every day and I talk with God every day and God is not unhappy with my making a choice to worship God by NOT going to church this week”
I hope you join me in joining the angels in clapping over Felicity. Here is a child of God accepting the fact that her life is a prayer and that God’s love for her encompasses and upholds her working at being her fullest self. Felicity is breathing life into this quotation attributed to the early Christian church leader Iraneus: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”