Becoming

I was fresh off the World Race and full of enlightenment, but also some remnants of fear had been left behind as I had no idea what season I would soon be stepping into.

I sat across the table from my grandma who, at the time (unbeknownst to both of us), was in the early stages of her journey with leukemia. She was prepping for a transition of all kinds, physical, mental, spiritual.

She was getting ready to move into my home, 17 hours away from what had become familiar to her. Her familiar was the Southeast, my familiar had been the Midwest. We traded places in almost the exact time frame. My dad even joked that I could move into her home with all of her belongings, and she, into mine.

Two women in completely different stages of life, yet so much of the same.

If personality tests mean anything to you, then you’ll enjoy this thoroughly. If they mean nothing to you, then you may have to do a bit of research to fully comprehend my epiphanies.

My grandma is an INFP 4. I am a (recently discovered) ENFP 7.

This is an interesting mix.

Through my study of the enneagram, and also my own personal journey, as well as my study of my grandmas journey- 4’s have a terrifyingly beautiful way of feeling their pain. They know how to sit in it, embrace it. Fully feel it.

I’m a 7. We avoid pain. And I am in this season of self-awareness that I have no clue what it means to “feel” pain.

4 months ago, I sat across the table from my beautiful grandma. Little did we know it at the time, leukemia was eating away at her.

I was upset with her then. She had said something unintentionally harmless from her perspective, yet offensive to a member of my tribe and because I borrow offenses all too easily, I let my offense fester without dealing with it.

We talked. We cried. And the conversation ended with her making a statement “I get it. You don’t like pain and you’re not going to deal with it.”

Ouch. That cut deep.

And even though Papa was taking me on a journey out of that wound, at the time, she was right.

She was 100% on point.

But I let that remark dig in the wound deeper and I kept running.

That was one of the last conversations I had with her before she passed away.

And even though she is physically gone, she left me with tools that are leading me on the journey of to how to deal.

It’s like she walked the path and left a trail for me.

Books. She knew I loved them. And she knew all my favorites, mainly because she’s the one who introduced me to them.

She was a lover of all the greats, Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen, Gregory Boyle, Thomas Merton.

I sifted through her all of her books, titles like “how to cope with death” a plethora of heavy readings you wouldn’t find on my bookshelf. This woman faced fears unimaginable to me. She was fearless and now, she is taking me on the journey too.

I used to think that feeling my pain and pondering my pain were one in the same. I’m discovering, it’s not.

Just the other day, someone asked me “as a 7, how do you feel pain?”

My response, I thought was so put together, refined and mature- “I have to think about my pain as a teacher. What is this moment teaching me? That helps me best.”

Within the next few hours I found myself nose deep in a book about this enneagram business and how 7’s avoid pain by reframing it as a learning experience.

Cool. I’m still avoiding. Great.

Now I’m left in this moment asking Papa what it means to feel. How do I sit and feel my pain.

He’s using my beautiful grandmother's life to show me.

She’d been through some shit, but she was one of the most self-sacrificial people I had the pleasure of knowing. She was often misunderstood, but I had the opportunity to see her vulnerable heart split open and her intentions were so sweet. She was okay with being misunderstood. She cared, deeply, but she didn’t let opinions of others stop her from being her True Self. She loved recklessly. She embraced transition.

And she left all the nuggets of awe and epiphany behind her for me to pick up along my own journey.

She paved the way. And now, it’s healing my heart too.

 "From evolution and the lifecycle of stars to our own lives, transformation and change appear to happen through periods of loss, crisis, stress, and even death. Physicists today would say that loss of energy or matter is not real. There is only transformation. Think of the changes water goes through in its journey from cloud (vapor) to liquid (rain) or solid (ice) and back to vapor.

What may look like loss or death is in fact a becoming."

-Richard Rohr