Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [14]
The water had gotten cold again, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface. It was truth-telling time, and I was more than willing. “Cleanse,” I thought. “Cleanse and get clear. Get clear and grow.” I was someplace else in my mind when my husband knocked at the door. “Are you okay in there?” He was used to me now and knew better than to open the door when I was processing. To put him at ease and to remind myself, I responded, “I’m blessed.”
Even when it seems that your life is falling apart, there is divine restoration going on. Karen and I had built my dreams into a solid structure, brick by brick and book by book. Which was why this was so very, very hard. Something had happened along the way, things no longer felt good. We were arguing rather than celebrating. Things were being said that made me very uneasy. I had seen, and now felt, some things about Karen that let me know that the marriage between us was falling apart. Our time together was quickly coming to an end. The truth is that I had known it for about a year. But I owed her. But she saved me when I was down and out. But she took care of me. What would I do without her? How could I fire someone who had been so good to me? This was Rhonda’s stuff!
Iyanla believed that Karen was her employee. She got paid to do a job, and that was all that was owed. Iyanla was grateful and loyal, but not beholding. Rhonda, however, had mixed business with friendship, and the business was going sour. Rhonda felt loyal to the patterns that she and Karen had established. Rhonda was also afraid. She was afraid of losing love and someone she loved. It was right there that the trains collided: Iyanla knew one thing; Rhonda believed another. Knowing and believing are not the same. When you know one thing and believe another, you experience conflict.
The water was just right. Hot enough to bring the crap to the surface and give me another hour of stillness. Rhonda needed healing. Healing takes place from the inside out. I had to go to the depths of my memory, the core of my soul, and make peace with what I had created. That’s right, I created it. Whenever we don’t do what we need to do, for whatever reason, we create crap. I once thought that if I prayed enough, meditated long enough, and demonstrated enough faith, things would work themselves out. I had thought I could live with the pangs of something being not quite right. Thank God I had grown enough to be unable to excuse away any level of dishonesty. Dishonesty was not a part of Iyanla’s nature, the nature I had acquired with the name. Lying still in the water, I remembered how I had acquired my name.
There was a lot of activity at Balé’s house when I arrived. A group of women were in one room, sitting on the floor, singing and pounding herbs in a large metal bowl. Several men were sitting in another room, laughing and talking. Balé was in his usual place, the kitchen. As always, he was glad to see me. He instructed me to take a seat in a room upstairs, while he continued his therapy. I sat listening for hours as the people on the first floor sang and talked and laughed. Each time I got up to go to the bathroom, I would peer over the railing, trying to see what was going on. I could hear. I could smell. But I could not see.
I had known Balé, my spiritual mentor and godfather, since I was nine years old. Sitting across the dinner table from him now, I felt as though I was seeing him for the first time. Although we had spoken occasionally, this was the first time I had seen Balé in fifteen years, and he had changed. So had I. Still, this man knew me. He knew my family; he knew my history. He knew Rhonda and he knew the person I was destined to be. He was my father figure. The father I had always wanted to love and approve of me. When I was a teenager, he had managed