I want THAT!

I have been feeling somewhat unsettled and restless lately. Restless inside. Wanting...what? Needing...what? I don't even know for sure. Part of this has to do with loneliness and not seeing my people enough lately. Part of it has to do with my general dissatisfaction with having to spend time working. There's more under all this frustration and crankiness than that. I'm sure a good part of it has to do with a lapse, a slowdown, an almost neglect of my spirituality. I just know I want and need..something. This is a familiar feeling and theme in my life. I struggle with knowing the difference between want and need sometimes. I struggle with asking for help. I struggle with guilt when I do want something. I'm not sure how that came to be; I know it's been there for a long time.

Three things about WANT:

- I grew up as the youngest child of eight in a household and home where there certainly was never enough money. I was sometimes envious of the other kids homes, clothes, toys, and houses that had fathers. I learned somehow that it wasn't right to ask for too much, verbally or through thoughts or prayers. It too often didn't happen. I quickly learned it was too hard to see my Mom's face time after time when she had to say no. There was also unspoken messages about being grateful for what we did have. I don't think these messages came from her as much as from the church, the school, the other well-meaning adults around me. I was taught to be proud of my intelligence and my humour, to look around me and find others who weren't as lucky as I was. There was a resignation that this was just the way things were, that it could be worse, that I had what I needed. In many ways, this has served me well over the years.

- I spent many years thinking want and need were the same thing, and many years thinking the wanting of physical items like cars and houses and clothes would fill the empty hole inside me. Each time I got a bit "luckier" in my life and got the car or the house or the clothes, magic happiness did not rain down upon me. I spent many years thinking the right person, the unconditional love and acceptance, the adoring friends, the good job with an outstanding boss would fill the empty hole. Alas, magic happiness STILL didn't rain down upon me. The hole was still there. And it still wasn't okay within my brain to want something. The guilt at wanting and the non-filled hole with the getting were still there.

- As a single Mom myself with not enough money, I once found myself with an eviction notice. The rent money had gone to buy food and to pay overdue bills. I was scared. I told only a few people about my predicament, and one of them shared my situation with my brother. He called me and we skirted around the issue - he knew and I knew he knew. Finally he said "If you want help, you have to ask for it". That was a key for me and the first time it sunk in to my bull-headedness that it is okay to ask for what you need. Along comes cancer about twenty years later. Of the many things my cancer experience taught me and showed me, one of the most pivotal was it is okay to ask for what I needed and for what I wanted. As I got healthy again, I soon let the guilt about asking come back. Guilt was the great Ruler of want and need.

This week I have thought about this a lot.  I believe want and need can often be the same thing. This week realizations and memories about my own needing and my own wanting spilled from my core being into my brain, into my heart, into my soul.The magic does not reign down upon me, ever. The magic comes when I allow myself to need and to want. All I have to do is ask, and wait, and accept what is given.