Big Bird Protects Me

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This mornings meditation was about Kindness and Goodness. I was to ask myself if there is anything threatening to fence off my heart, or harden it toward my day? WHY YES. YES THERE IS. It bubbled right to the surface. Clear as day. "I am afraid of other people's pain. I feel responsible for other people's pain and anger and it makes me want to scream, fight, and run.

Big Bird, standing in front of me, full of love.

I don't fear it like I fear roller coasters - I legitimately hung out with a lot of stoners who worked on them and I learned through that experience that their attention to the safety checks can be called negligent. So I have a healthy fear of them. Alcohol. I fear alcohol because I know that it controls me and I don't like who I become when I drink. Those are not the same. This is a more subtle fear that just revealed itself to me this morning very clearly. It's like my fear of drowning, or burning to death. It's an immediate, in the moment, while people are screaming their anger or pain at me or near me, it literally feels like I might die. I feel like there isn't enough air in the room for both of us. I feel like their raw emotional expression of pain could literally make me drown. I flip to my reptillian brain. I'm triggered. I'm triggered like a war vet. I'm triggered by people's pain and or anger being released at me OR around me. I have not learned to separate myself from that. Very interesting. I get it. I am a little me again, in the presence of a fight, terrified that life as I know it could end and I'm kicking manically from the depths of that suffocating feeling because I want to live. Kicking to reach the surface for some air. For some relief.

This is the size ME that Big Bird stepped in front of.

What does that have to do with Big Bird, you ask? Or why I love God so much? I'll tell you. After this became so clear this morning, the meditation invited us to ask to be inspired with an image that I could use to take care of myself when triggered by this thing that seeks to fence off my heart during my day. I did, I asked the Universe. Plain as day, a picture of Big Bird, standing in front of a LITTLE ME, a little girl Jenny me, appeared, with his big loving, gentle heart of love providing me protection. He stood with his wings spread to hide me from the energy of the the persons pain. WOW. And I felt safe.

After further reflection I thought this wonderful, playful image all the more profound when I realized that Big Bird was protecting me as I stood behind him and his open wings shielded the view of pain... but more fantastic still, to the person in pain, he stood with his wings wide open, offering an embrace that I am not strong enough at times to offer. Big Bird kept love as the intervention to pain.

Powerful powerful stuff.

Love God. Love Others (even if you need to bring Big Bird with you).

And everything else will fall into place.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm growing and healing. I'll take it all.