Lifeletter #125: Your Come to Jesus Moment

Lately, my ears seem to perk right up whenever someone talks to me about being humbled. In fact, it’s more than my ears—my heart gets stirred as well. There is something very different in the energy and the whole feeling of such a conversation, whenever someone is able to speak from the experience of being humbled.

I’ve learned that things happen when someone is truly humbled. They don’t carry on in the same way. Sometimes I call these ‘our come to Jesus’ moments. I think they deserve a deep level of our attention and respect.

I had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment recently, in relation to my criticality. That’s a clinical way of talking about the times when I am simply a bitch. I know that the ability to be a bitch is essential at times. Most women I have spoken with are aware of this. If we suppress the energy of bitchiness, we become someone like Archie Bunker’s wife, Edith, slinking around the house like a shadow, trying to please everyone but ourselves.

There’s a shadow side to bitchiness though. It’s all of the suppressed anger, frustration and powerlessness that women have struggled with for thousands of years. This energy gets passed down to us through the women in our lineages. In the family constellation work, you can see this very clearly.

My ‘come to Jesus’ moment happened when I was able to face this energy in myself, this tendency to criticize that I inherited, and to really feel the price I have paid for it. And the damage it has done in my relationships. Without drama. Without self-pity. And without guilt.

There was something else there though, I could feel it. It was a very deep sense of being sorry. All the way down into my belly. This experience of being truly sorry, without guilt and self-hatred, is very healing. It tends to liberate the pattern that has been persisting in spite of all our efforts.

One word for this healing, liberating energy is ‘remorse.’ I think it’s quite rare to be visited by the experience of remorse. That’s why I call it a ‘come to Jesus’ moment. It’s very uncomfortable to feel this remorse. It pierces the heart. There are no excuses left. We are standing alone, in the truth of what we have been turning away from for a very long time. So there is grief in remorse. But it’s a very special kind of grief. It’s full of clarity and love. Remorse is like good medicine—very bitter to swallow, but essential, if we want to touch our wholeness.

A moment of true and deep humility does not leave me untouched. I am different, after such a moment. The depth and clarity of what I have been able to face at last, has washed me, left me naked in front of myself. It’s extraordinarily difficult, and a vast relief.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
-David Whyte

I give great thanks to my partner Jonathan, who has loved me deeply through all of this.

with love,
Shayla