How (And Why) I'm Rediscovering My Spirituality

Taking instruction from intuition, healing from burnout, and a very fashionable church, indeed.

Sunday morning, two nervous adults walked into Sunday mass.

Nervous not because they’d sinned. But because they aren’t catholic.

Lately I’ve been feeling a strong call to rediscover my relationship to the Source of life. To faith, to the universe, dare I say God.

Maybe it’s a result of the life force coming back to my bones as I heal from burnout after leaving my corporate job.

The more I spend time with this bond, the stronger it gets. The louder the voice of intuition in my head. The more prominent its messages.

Standing in a grocery store last week, staring at a vat of packaged strawberries, suddenly I heard:

“I won’t let you succeed at anything other than being your true self.”

I knew exactly what the voice meant. That I could work hard, as I always had (the perpetual good girl), and see progress and profit. I could get a myriad of jobs as a copywriter, marketer, whatever I wanted, really. I could get promoted, and push and push that rock up that hill forever.

But inevitably, it would end as it always did: my soul would harden, my heart would callous, my creativity would smolder out. I’d eventually have to leave as I’d see the damage of all my passionate work, selling products to people who believed their purchase would change their life. When deep down I knew, the change they were seeking had to come from inside themselves.

The voice was reminding me in this season, while I’m currently not working on anything but healing, that I could go back to that safe and predictable paycheck path anytime I wanted. When my money scarcity wounds (which I’ll be talking about how I’m healing soon) pop back up, I could always go back to corporate jobs, or any day job that gave me the illusion of security. I could always go back to trading my time and energy for survival money. Rather than my gifts and talents for true earnings on a scale much bigger than finances.

I know that voice well. She was the one who, at 17, when my parents sat with their heads hung and tears in their eyes, said: “You have cancer,”

She whispered: “Tell the no. We’re not going to do it like this. You are not going to die.”

So setting in motion a trajectory of my treatment in which we vowed to chase the light, to see the miracles, to not let our fear of the unknown put us in those dark places where everyone is afraid to speak and so only talks in whispers and the whole thing feels heavy and ugly.

“Not like this,” I told them. “We’re not going to cry. We’ll do the treatment or the surgery, whatever we have to do. And we’re going to come out better for it. I’m not going to die.”

And lately, through the cravings in my muscles and my heart and my thoughts, I’m drawn to do things like lay in the grass and feel the pulse of the earth run through me from the ground up. Or, as this weekend, go find places where people are rejoicing. Even inexplicably, I have a hard time listening to the music I used to. I want everything to feel freer, lighter, more alive.

And if I was going to go to church, which I don’t often do, I wanted it to feel like, well, church. We tried one other service but it felt too relaxed. There was no style to it, no pomp and circumstance. A forever fashion-girl, I needed all the glitz and Godly glamour involved. I wanted it to feel big, grandiose, like a beautiful production and not just time in a somewhat smelly little carpeted auditorium.

So, scared of getting kicked out by doing the wrong thing, I read the website four times to ensure we were actually welcome, and we walked 4 blocks to a small cathedral downtown to attend mass. The patrons were dressed up. The Priests were wearing their traditional robes. An organ player projected chords reverberated through the huge wooden beams. Light shone through the stained glass.

And while I know that many catholics and people of all faith say that church is the very reason they’ve lost their faith, today I can say the opposite. Because to watch so many people gather, with all the artistry and ritual included, singing and praying together, made me feel less alone. Even though lately, I know more clearly I am never alone. The voice is always there. The light is always available to chase. I can always turn my face toward the sun and be charged up like a battery pack. No matter how far from my creativity, my instinct and intuition, my true self I’ve strayed.