Sabbatical 101: Surrender to Your Mediocrity
“ I tried everything, it didn’t work. What I didn’t try was the truth” - India Arie
Imagine being born and given a backpack to carry things that you’ll receive and find along the way. Blankets/quilts your grandmother knitted for you, toys you got on special birthdays, books or other reading materials you feel helped you mature, pictures/knick knacks to remember friendships. You know, all these wonderful keepsakes. As time moves along, you start seeing other backpacks. Some full, some skimpy. Some with extra pockets and secret hidden zippers. Some clear, some colorful. Sometimes the other bags look so much better, bigger, more efficient than ours. We think, why not switch it? It’s just a bag.
Well, I switched mine.
I initially had a bag of grace and swapped it for a bag of external validity. My new bag began to be filled with false experiences of acceptance, fake jewelry that equated to love, scarfs of shame and guilt that kept me warm in the winter of pain and bottles of sunscreen and perfumes that “protected” me from hurting others and masked my emotional stench. I had been carrying around duffle bags, suitcases and purses of mismanaged time and emotions.
When you’re used to living and thriving in dysfunction, you make being a baggage carrier look good
Pre-intervention
There are two lifestyles I am proud to admit I’ve participated in: People Pleasing and Internalizing. Adopting these two concepts fed into the countless stories that I told myself about the importance of placing others before me. All of which, in my mind, led to less conflict and more peace. I would keep my feelings of pain, embarrassment and disappointment stuffed inside, as I thought to myself,
Ajai you’re probably the problem. Fix it before they “leave” us.
These lifestyles never included me, thought of me, accounted for me or even acknowledged me. I don’t even think I could have really grasped the tole it had taken on me. Now on the other side, I can’t believe how long I survived in this dysfunction. I seemed to have made more than just a bed for myself and boy was I making it look comfortable day by day.
What do you do when life comes crashing down and the only way you can fix it, is to surrender to the crumbling?
In somewhat of an outer body experience, I believe God began to show me just how much dysfunction I was living in. Whether it be in the midst of conversations, conferences or personal prayer time, I settled for little envelopes of clarity and small pieces of freedom. Not realizing that I was committing mental and spiritual suicide by going right back into the same patterns afterwards. I assumed I could handle it THIS time and make better choices THIS time but that time and many times after, I dug my grave. Much deeper than 6 feet.
My brain was way past capacity, my heart was polluted, my memory was shot and my body could no longer function at its best. I had given myself a false sense of release all of these years and the pain was rising to the surface. Trigger after trigger, frustration after frustration, disappointment after disappointment, I started to wake up and realize what I had done. I was no longer given the freedom to come, willingly and openly, to healing on my own. At this point, it needed to be forced.
Intervention
When 2019 began, I knew that I would be taking the year by storm. I felt that I had mentally and spiritually prepared for a year of blessings and intentionally sought out ways to manifest what I believed belonged to me. Little did I know, the devil was with a vengeance. The first three months had been filled with emotional discrepancy, temptation, blurred boundary lines and behind the scenes moments of dishonesty regarding myself along with others. Though I made plans to fight the good fight, I didn’t account for the tactics of the enemy nor the inner me. I didn’t strategically plan my defense. I wasn’t actively staying out of territories that may influence me to regress. I didn’t seek first the kingdom of God. I simply planned to win with no strategy, no protection and was quickly humbled. The moment you become too arrogant to your own strength is when you give the devil room to exercise his.
Now as believers, we are made aware early on of the ONLY three tactics he has: Steal, Kill & Destroy. However, I must advise that you look at these strategies in all capacities. Not just in the physical but in the mental and spiritual. Pastor Dharius Daniels depicts in Blazy Faith (Part 12 of the Crazy Faith series by Transformation Church), how these tactics can be happening to us more than we know. For me? He had stolen my peace and safety with myself and was attempting to kill the very hope I had of the future God had promised me.
I had found little gaps of freedom but I left my faith for better, with him. Now keep this in mind also. What satan (he doesn’t deserve to have his name capitalized!) doesn’t destroy he distracts and boy was I completely distracted from the path I was supposed to be on. For this, I thank God everyday for grace and mercy as my sidetracks and sideswipes from the enemy worked for my good.
I asked you all earlier, what would you do if letting life crumble was your only option. Life had previously asked me and on April 12th 2019, I gave my answer. I finally surrendered.
On April 12th 2019 around 4am, I would experience a pain that I never have before. In the backyard of a Barcelona Airbnb, I cried my eyes out. To be honest with you, I had been crying all day. It seemed as though my shedding process had come to a head and everything was beginning to spill out but that final breakdown was unimaginable. Falling to my knee’s, crouched in somewhat of a fetal position, muffling my agonizing screams, I had accepted my reality as it was right then and there. Shame, guilt, fear, unproclaimed responsibility, perfection, fragility and lies began to fall off my shoulders.
After the wake of what seemed like a friendship tornado, I was mentally walking through the rubble thinking that most, if not all was somewhat my fault. That if, like always, I had done a better job these conversations and feelings of disappointment, some towards me and others would not be present. Ironically, before these events took place, I had asked an old friend of mine with tears in my eyes, “why do I have to always be the one to carry it?!”
“It” depicting everything about everyone. My lifestyle of people pleasing and internalizing projected a “skill” of being able to hold whatever people gave me even if it was at the expense of myself and my relationships. What triggered this final breakdown? I honestly don’t know but I wish God had told me that I’d cry just about everyday after that.
After returning from my trip and getting through some conversations that smacked me in the face, I decided that I would take God up on His offer of true healing. I would do WHATEVER it took to get back to Him, even if I had to scratch and crawl chest to floor to make it back to His feet. On April 26th, I decided to tackle my sabbatical. No social media. No outings. No drinking. No communication with anyone besides who I deemed as family. No secular music. No distractions, no fighting the process. I only read two books: The Empath Experience and the Bible and I refrained from writing any material besides journaling. I pretty much went to work, locked myself in my office, went home and locked myself in the room. I cried all day and night, barely ate and often times found myself just staring out into the distance at times.
Treatment
April 26th to July 1st. 66 days of the most excruciating, painfully stunning, heart wrenching healing moments of my life. 66 days of tears, honest truths, self to self, inner emotional, present moments. I held a space for every emotion that came up, spent some afternoons after work at beaches or parks, wrote letters to myself and those from my past, began counseling and formed new habits of identifying safe spaces to share with life in present moments. I felt the pain. I embraced the fear and was present, heart, mind and soul with the world around me. So present that I felt the apologies of all the mismanaged versions of me that was sorry I had to deal with all of my consequences. I breathed in freedom and released toxicity. I welcomed anxiety and embraced surrenderance like two caregivers.
I know a lot of you probably had a ton of questions, comments and concerns after reading my last post Tru. I got a lot of looks, hugs and “umm excuse me” text messages afterwards lol
In the moment that I decided to write that, I really didn’t know anything. I didn’t know why I was having severe pains in my chest when my EKG’s said things were normal. I didn’t know why I was crying or spacing out at random moments. I didn’t know why I was having killer migraines when my MRI’s said nothing was wrong. I didn’t know why I couldn’t smile or laugh like I used to. I didn’t know why my anxiety began to be unmanageable, I simply didn’t know. But one thing I did know was that I had given up. I was past being tired and was in a space of defeat. I believed that I brought myself to this space and there would be nothing I could do to get myself out of it. I was alone, I was hurting, I was scared and I was at a standstill. I also knew this was needed cause I could no longer carry the weight.
Sometimes we kill ourselves over the “why”. Why me, why now, why not me, why them, why this why that. Why does the why even matter? We want to make sense of everything that happens to us and wonder why there is so much more added stress. The why wasn’t important to me and the what wasn't either, simply because I knew when, who and how. I didn’t care to understand why I was finally in that space, I just needed to embrace it before it was too late.
In the words of Glennon Doyle, “The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It's a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up.”
So I surrendered to my mediocrity. Surrendered to where and who I was in life. Surrendered to my current emotions whether it was full of chaos or confusion. Surrendered to my pain whether I would make it out on the other side or not. Screamed death to my ego and death to the Ajai I knew. My surrenderance was my rebirth. My surrenderance ignited the flame of freedom. My mediocrity birthed excellence.
It was worth it.
Stay tuned for what I learned the moment I surrendered!
Until next time <3