Toward the Center ~

There are days when everything feels just right.
I wake up early, giving myself extra time to linger over coffee and my journal. A new audiobook keeps me company on my morning walk. My work flows effortlessly, and I accomplish more than I expected. I catch up with a friend on the phone, and the conversation leaves me feeling connected. Even dinner turns out perfectly.
As the day draws to a close, I settle into that familiar feeling I call GJP.
Then I notice it.
A slight tightening in my chest.
A whisper of anxiety.
What's happening?
Why am I anxious?
I've experienced this often enough to recognize the pattern.
Nothing has gone wrong.
No crisis.
No bad news.
Just an unexpected descent into searching for what must be wrong.
I've always called it spiraling.
Until I read this by Henri Nouwen.
"You can look at your life as a large cone that sometimes becomes narrower the deeper you go. There are many doors in that cone that give you the chance to leave the journey. But you have been closing those doors one after the other, making yourself go deeper and deeper into your center.  Every time you close another door... you commit yourself to go deeper into the heart and thus deeper into the heart of God."
I couldn't stop thinking about that image.
For years I’ve pictured myself spiraling downward into something dark, something to escape before I went too far.
But Nouwen offered me a different image.
A cone.
Instead of circling out of control, what if I had been moving inward? What if each return to the same questions wasn't evidence that I was stuck but an invitation to go a little deeper?
As I pictured the cone, I imagined small doors all along its sides.
The door of distraction.
The door of busyness.
The door of needing approval.
The door of immediate relief.
The door of certainty.
Some of those doors look harmless. Others even look wise. Harmless or not, each offers an exit from the inward journey.
Nouwen reminds us that healing comes when we stop hiding our weakness and allow our divided selves to become whole.
Perhaps that's why the inward journey can feel so unsettling at times.
But as I reframe my view, I see myself being gathered together, not falling apart.
As the cone became narrower, there was less room to carry everything I thought I needed.
The need to be understood.
The need for certainty.
The need to figure everything out.
The need for someone else's approval.
One by one, there simply wasn't room.
My life didn't become smaller. It became simpler.
Eventually there's only enough room for what has always been true.
At the center...
I am already beloved.
Maybe what I've been calling spiraling wasn't a sign that something was wrong.
Maybe it was an invitation to go deeper.
The next time I catch myself saying, I'm spiraling, I hope I'll pause before reaching for the nearest exit.
Instead, I want to ask:
Is this taking me away from myself... or toward my center? 

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