Growing up, my mom realized quickly that she couldn’t tell me that something exciting was soon to happen because I’d be relentlessly nipping at her heels until the moment came. One of my family’s favorite words to describe me was impatient, and I certainly was. As my own daughter today loves to quote from her favorite Piggie and Gerald book, “Waiting is not easy.”
But worse than that was if whatever was being anticipated didn’t actually end up happening. For me back then – and for much of my life – the heartbreak of disappointment could feel nearly unbearable. The frustration I would feel in my young body felt like it might consume me with flames. It seemed to have nowhere to go.
I learned at some early point that while I clearly couldn’t control every outcome, I could certainly increase my chances of not having to feel the fiery flames of disappointment if I could do everything in my control to make the outcome I wanted happen. I would work hard. I would be persistent, perservering, unyielding in my efforts. My family would start calling me hardheaded at some point, maybe with some mild affection but mostly with exasperation.
When in my 20s I was diagnosed with infertility, my effort-trumps-all paradigm met a painful match. It was as if my psyche couldn’t fully comprehend the notion that doing all the right things, as faithfully and strategically as possible, could still result in not getting what I most desperately wanted. I’d faced loss and heartache before by that point, but this seemed unbearable.
I was angry. I was bereft. I felt denied this most sacred gift. There wasn’t a way yet, in the midst of the painfully rough initiation, that perhaps I was being spared.
It wasn’t for many more years, in fact, that the mere idea of this would come into my consciousness. And as I sit down to write about this, I hate that I cannot, for the life of me, remember when it exactly did. What I do know is that it has become a mantra for me – a beacon of sorts in navigating the searing pain of disappointment and loss.
I am not being denied, only spared.
While I don’t remember where this idea originated for me, I do remember first thinking like it sounded like some spiritually bypassing bullshit. It was hard to wrap my head around the idea that things that didn’t work out or that I lost were somehow all okay because they weren’t meant for me. I’d heard plenty of versions of “what’s meant for you won’t pass you by” in my decades, and it always sounded sweet but placating.
But the idea of not being denied, but spared – the way it activated me signaled to me that there was something there. I’ve learned over the years that often my greatest teachers are the people and ideas that initially most agitate me. So I decided to play with this concept.
Okay, I thought. Let’s see. And I began to just let the concept linger when I faced more minor disappointments. A meeting I really needed to happen got cancelled. My kid got sick and I had to miss a dinner I was looking forward to. My prescription wasn’t ready at the pharmacy for a few extra days. What could I possibly be being spared with these frustrations? I made a commitment to myself to at least get curious.
At first, it would take a while to discover ways I might be being spared. And sometimes it was clearer, but sometimes it took a bit of mental gymnastics. My cancelled meeting gave me an hour in which I ended up with some time talking to a colleague I hadn’t caught up with, and I learned that her father was very ill. My missed dinner meant that I ended up snuggled in bed with my oldest kiddo, a rarity in these later youth years. A few days without this particular medicine helped me see that it wasn’t actually working as well I’d thought, and I could talk with my doctor about it.
Those were the gifts, but what was I spared? I was spared the false evidence that everything needs to happen on my timeline. I was spared the delusion that my plans are sacrosanct. I was spared from missing out on connection, something I can too easily deprioritize. I was spared not having important information about my health. I was spared missing out on opportunities to practice the patience and acceptance I’ve needed since being a little girl.
I realize that there’s a way in which all of this can sound a whole lot like the notion of everything happens for a reason, an aphorism that’s never fully landed with me. That version often – to my ear – implies a divine order or a predestination that I’m sure about. There are plenty of people for whom that idea offers a sense of security. But I don’t actually think that to practice being not denied, but spared requires fate or faith, per se.
Perhaps it’s because to me, not denied, but spared is not so much a commentary on the divine order, but rather an intentional practice. It invites me, in the practice of it, to show up to the pain of frustration and disappointment with a degree of curiosity. I don’t necessarily have to believe that anyone or anything bigger than me has the answer to that question of what am I being spared of. My work is to seek, and perhaps even create, the answer.
I’ll admit that the bigger losses require harder practice. And even as I talk about this, I’m aware that it could feel somehow invalidating of the grief of some of our most painful experiences. The loss of a pregnancy. The loss of a partner. The loss of a job or a home or a scary diagnosis. It might take years until we can begin to wrestle with the question of what we were spared. Being with the scorching grief of the experience is a pre-requisite and cannot be bypassed for this practice. The meaning making comes only after the the pain is fully felt.
But as the anger or the grief starts to lift just a bit – or if they’ve been hanging around for a long time with no movement – we might consider asking ourselves gently, “What have I been spared here?” The answers will rarely be literal. They will often be lessons we couldn’t otherwise have learned. Delusions we were carrying about how the world works. Aspects of our ego or personality that required an update. A life that wouldn’t have been as authentically ours.
What I’ve found in practicing not denied, but spared is that I get to cling much less tightly to any particular outcome. Much of my life I spent thinking I would fall apart if things didn’t turn out to my plan. I still feel the full weight of frustration and loss, but I have something to reshape it now. Frustration is great kindling. If we have a process for alchemizing it, we can use it to transform even our most wrenching experiences into something sacred, something of meaning.
Questions for Reflection
- What is a more minor frustration that you’ve faced in the past week that you could employ this practice with?
- What is an experience or loss from your past that you might be able to reflect upon and see what you were ultimately spared?
- What is something you are facing more currently, and what is it like to even let this question gently sit in your awareness with it?
