How new it feels to learn to receive
After a lifetime of giving,
And in giving believe.
Being celebrated and acknowledged feels foreign indeed
And it’s sad to realize:
I don’t quite know how to receive.
It is so easy to give!
It feels so natural, so real.
It feels like my very nature to give,
Not to receive.
Is it even all right to in turn receive?
I find my head asking my heart
Is it not my part just to give,
And not look to receive?
The Wisdom teaches me I am here to both give and receive.
After all, I cannot only breathe out, I must breathe in.
This is by its very act the beginning of how to receive.
I do it all day and night long without a thought, I believe.
Yet when another tries to love me, perhaps I push it away.
It seems there is a wall I have erected to keep pain out;
When I give I am in control , but to receive I must allow myself to let you in…
That has been frightening, it seems, to the mind that has been in me.
Now I see – and I want to be courageous enough to receive.
I want to be courageous enough to believe that I can let you in
without it costing me more in grief than I can relieve.
Love waits for me, perhaps, until I am more ready to receive?
A woman recently, not knowing me well,
heard me speak very personally of wanting to welcome Love.
“It sounds like it’s all about you,” she said, “about what you want to receive.
What about what you are going to give? First you must give before you can receive.
Flip it around, think of what you can give, and then, I feel sure, you will receive.”
‘Though her words stung me, there was a truth in them to me.
Old wounds and pain hardened my heart, I see.
Perhaps I have, in this case, been very much looking to receive.
Having given so much, and been turned away three times for three,
I have been sad, angry and confused. I think I have felt it is my turn to receive.
Yet on this Mothers Day, surrounded by love from my children,
to whom it is so natural for me to give and not necessarily receive,
I noticed I felt quite awkward just to receive.
With the showers of love, affection and flowers
I actually felt out of place, unaccustomed to receive.
Love,
I make you this vow.
I wish to know You more deeply, more personally than ever before.
I wish to open my heart and let You in to the depths of my being.
I want to allow myself to be vulnerable to You.
I want to give and to receive.
So I vow to give You, Love, all I’ve got:
My heart, my soul, my love, my trust.
I vow to give, and give some more.
For, to me, to give is to Be.
I vow to be more and more myself for You.
And so I give , and give some more.
And in the giving, let me learn again to live.
To live with an open heart, so there is even more to give.
Oh, let me live again, Love.
There is so much more to give.
And in the giving so shall I learn to receive.
Breathe in, breathe out,
I must give and I must receive.
I am ready for You, Love.
I shall give. I shall receive.
©Kathryn Tull May 12, 2013
“Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within ourselves that We have built against it.” ~ Rumi