Monika Basile's Blog: Confessions of a Bleeding Heart - Posts Tagged "god"

Hey, Mom and Dad? Now don’t get mad but…I got a tattoo.

I know. I know. I know. I’m too old for this and it’s permanent and I didn’t even get it in a truly hidden place. It’s on my leg and I can’t erase it. It was a gift and it actually reminds me of other gifts. So bare with me as I share the meaning—and it really means a whole lot if you see the bigger picture…

These past few years have been an absolute hell for too many reasons—so many reasons. I have been angry a lot—angry at life and the way everything seems to be turning out and challenging me at every turn, angry that there is this amount of hurt in one woman’s life and angry at God. I felt like he had taken his eyes off me to allow me to go through the tragedies I have had to endure. I even said it out loud one day when I was watching the sparrows flit around the patio at the group home. Sitting there in the midst of a heart break, I whispered those words out loud, “Your eye is on the sparrow God, but surely you have taken them off me. You have forgotten me.”

And then God decided to surprise me and show me otherwise.

I am not sure exactly when it started. I only know when I noticed and decided something strange was going on. I noticed sparrows suddenly everywhere when I had not noticed them before. Last summer, sitting on my steps, gazing at my asphalt garden I noticed hundreds of sparrows in the parking lot making weird formations. They flew from wire, to building and then to the top of my car. Back and forth and back and forth and it was one of the oddest things I had ever seen. I thought it was isolated. It wasn’t.

Even the girls commented on the strangeness when we sat on those rusted metal steps on and off all this summer and fall. As long as we sat there, the sparrows were there and they were constantly swarming where there are no trees or grass or bushes.

One night, I was taking my youngest daughter to a friend’s. We got in the car and something flew past her head tangling in her hair and then into the back of the station wagon. She screamed in near hysteria thinking it was a bat. I opened the hatch and to my surprise a sparrow flew out.

At the group home, the sparrows suddenly seemed to swarm the bushes and patio. Yes, we feed the birds there. We have always fed the birds and wild life. But the sparrows gathered in droves and would roll in the dirt and burrow. In all the years I have been there, there never has been such an abundance of them. The client’s would laugh and laugh but I began to think that maybe someone was trying to tell me something.

A few days after the sparrow got in my car, I was sitting in the car with my cousin. I was telling her about the odd sparrow incidents. I laughed kind of half-heartedly but I finally admitted, “You know, I keep thinking all these sparrows hanging around have something to do with me. I kept telling God he took his eyes off me.”

Suddenly, I noticed a sparrow sitting in a bush nearby. It appeared to be looking right at me. Again I laughed and said, “I must be nuts because I swear that damn bird is staring right at me…”

My cousin said, “Monika, it is. That is freaky!”

Just then, that little sparrow hopped off the branch of the bush, and hopped over to my car and then tried to fly in the car window where I was sitting. I got the window up before it got inside.
I shouted out then, “Okay! Okay already! You’re looking at me. I get it!” and I did get it. I do get it.

His eye is on the sparrow; surely his eye is on me. It’s a permanent situation—like my tattoo.

I won’t ever forget that again.

Monika M. Basile

There is one deal breaker that I will never budge on. To me, it is the most important one. It is the one instance that no matter how much I like a man, adore a man or am attracted, I will not change my mind. I can’t compromise here and some may see me as a fool.

He must believe in God.

I don’t care if someone has religion or even what religion they follow. I don’t care if they call God a Higher Power, Allah, Supreme Being, Her, Him or even Fred. I just need to have the assurance that he will not knock my faith or make fun of me for having it. I would not do that to anyone, non-believer or believer. I simply want to know, that when the odd things that happen in my life happen—my future love will understand that I will see God somewhere in that picture.

I think that to debate my faith with one of the ones who is to love me—who I am to love, is exhausting. If you don’t believe at all in the existence of a God, then you will never be able to “get” me, to understand me or to truly accept the secret aspects of my life. It is at the core of who I am. My faith is. It has always been. It isn’t something that I want to change however much questioning I may do. And it is not my intention to change anyone's thinking either.

I don’t practice any particular religion though I do hold certain religious beliefs. I practice at living since I don’t seem to be a natural at it. I practice kindness, and compassion. I practice patience and empathy. I even practice being angry and speaking my mind without destroying the people around me. I have to practice these things all the time due to me being human.

I am not perfect in the least. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have any idea what I am actually doing. I only know that whatever is happening, wherever I may be going to or going through, I am not doing it alone or with an internal GPS. I’ve always been bad at directions so I make a lot of detours. I stumble and fall. I rage against God’s choices when I realize where he may be leading is where I don’t feel like going, or what I am being pulled from is what I want to have. Yet, I know with such assurance it is all leading up to something whether it is something big or small.

I am a believer in miracles. I know love is a miracle. Life is a miracle. To have either as well as both is a blessing. It isn’t a right or a guarantee to have either. I want the one who I will share my life with to know that it will be a miracle to find each other at all. That it is an intricate dance and design as each person is brought into our lives, brought out of our lives, or actually stays to dance the final waltz. I would like the man who shares my life to find me a blessing to his life as much as I will know he is one to mine.

Monika M. Basile

This is just a small part of the story. The beginning part. It is one I never told and least of all to the person it is about though I have promised to do so some day.

Awhile back, I had been discouraged about my ability to pick anyone who might be good for me. I seemed to get sucked into the most unlikely of relationships and wind up confused and feeling like a fool, or shocked and feeling that I must just somehow be an idiot in the grand scheme of the universe’s workings. So, I asked God for specifics. I said, “Put a red blow on him. I seem to choose so poorly. I don’t trust myself anymore to find what I am supposed to be having because I get distracted too easily, or too excited, or to understanding, or I am just not where I need to be. Put a red bow on him, God, because I can’t make heads or tails of this anymore.”

Mr. Music arrived on the train. I have written of him before. “ The Wishing Well” is about him and an ending of sorts. I guess it is confusing to not have started at the beginning. I think somehow we don’t know how significant something will be until we have gotten somewhat through the story.

I digress.

We had talked for a time but hadn’t met. Life didn’t work out for it to happen at that time. Yet, here it was at last. The grand meeting. There was excitement and nervousness and I decided to just go with it. It was in the midst of a heat wave. I was dressed to the nines. I looked great until I stepped out in the heat and my hair frizzed and makeup melted down my face while I drove in my poorly air-conditioned car and waited at the station. “Red bow, God. A red bow.” I am not sure what I was expecting, but certainly not him.

I sat there waiting until the crowds of passengers had flowed through the parking lot. And then he stepped outside and I was pretty sure it wasn’t actually him. He was nothing I had seen in photographs and not at all what I had imagined. Though I knew he was a few years younger, I didn’t expect someone that looked about thirty or younger. He had wild crazy hair, skinny, short, covered in tattoos, weird glasses. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt—and bright red shoes.

“You have to have this wrong...” I told God. “I said a red bow not red shoes.” And then it occurred to me, maybe the red shoes were actually God’s version of a red bow.

Mr. Music leaned into the car window. “I’m not what you expected am I?” and then got into my car. “I’m not your type. You probably go for big beefy guys.” (which before then was probably close to the truth.)

I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t have a type. Not really.” and I argued with God a bit for making that the case. Red shoes. Darn. He couldn’t stop talking or touching me and rested a hand on my arm. That is when I saw the tattoo. The pure red tattoo on his hand that is very distinctive that I will not describe here, but I have never seen another like it. I only thought,” Darn it God! Stop it already!”

By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I was intrigued. I felt we made the oddest couple—Mutt and Jeff—and I worried everyone would look at me and think I was a cougar or a giant. During dinner, I forgot all about what anyone else would be or could be thinking and I never thought that thought again. He is singly the most interesting and strange person I have ever met. By the end of dinner, I was fascinated.

We went for a walk at the War Memorial and it started to drizzle. My hair got frizzier and so did his. We walked along holding hands, not noticing the rain was getting harder until we were racing through a downpour. He kissed me in the car and I drove him back to the train.

Mr. Music and I have very different lives that don’t seem to run in sync with each other. It doesn’t mean they never will. It simply means I don’t know. Yet, I still believe it was a designed move on divinity’s part to bring him to me. I learned an important lesson—that anything can happen. I learned that the one who is to be the one may not arrive in the package I imagined and that I most likely am not the package someone else specifically chose either. I learned that I should be moving wherever I am being led and be able to allow it all to unfold with a bit of faith that all is as it should e. I learned that I would have almost lost an experience if God hadn’t decided to put a big red bow on it and open up my world.

Monika M. Basile

The things I regret in life are all of the things I wasn’t brave enough to do or to say or to be.

There are too many of them. There has been so many times that a gargantuan fear gripped me tight and I failed to follow my own inner voice. I wonder about that voice a lot and I wonder why it has never fallen silent enough for me to forget the chances I may have missed to be the human I was intended to be. I have no idea where the voice comes from, if it is mine or some otherworldly noise chattering up a storm and leaving me unsettled at times.

It isn’t a “beating yourself up” kind of feeling. It is more just a tweak of sadness that hangs about my shoulders. We can’t change the past. We can only learn from it. It doesn’t mean we actually do. And that voice—I think it sometimes chants in my ears to remind me that I am more than I am brave enough to be.

Some of my regrets are huge and some are just small tiny things and some I know are not that big of a deal to anyone but me. They are mine. I can’t blame anyone else for how I reacted to my life and I have to also learn a way to forgive myself for being a big ol’ chicken sometimes.

I finished writing my first novel when I was twenty six years old. I wrote it while the children napped, eating grapes and scribbling with a number two pencil into five, five subject college themed notebooks. When I was done I tucked it away, never brave enough to take the time to type it out and submit it anywhere. It still sits under my bed in a box. It took ten years before I got to finish another. But I learned. I wrote the next on a computer and I submitted it. I bore the rejection—the constant rejection—until it wasn’t rejected. I left a mark in the world even if it wasn’t more than a scratch. I regret not being brave enough sooner. I would be much further to my dream.

There were times I did not speak out when I should have. I allowed something to happen due to being afraid of how it would affect me and my life. Now, I live the aftermath of waiting too long and going to the wrong people instead of doing what my gut was screaming at me to do(which was to blow it all wide open to the highest authority). I regret that I wasn’t brave enough to listen to my inner voice and follow its instructions to the tee.

I regret the times I didn’t say something nice when I was thinking something nice and the times I said something ugly when I was feeling ugly.

There are those men in my life that I never was brave enough to tell how I feel. And there were those men that I wasn’t brave enough to kick to the curb at the time I should have been kicking hard. There are those words I withheld out of fear, the truth of my hurt or the honesty of my heart. I regret I didn’t say what I should have and I regret each time I let the anger get the best of me and said something I can never take back.

I hate that there have been times I have walked right on by someone in need because I was broke or in a hurry. I should never have allowed myself to be too busy or self-absorbed to not be a comfort at each opportunity presented. I am learning still and find it very hard not to stop now. But I think about all the times I was in such a rush that I didn’t stop to help thinking that someone else would. My inner voice tells me that in those cases—I may have been just the one that was put there to be of service.

I regret each pity party I have held with party hats and streamers, failing to see the joy that still spattered through. I regret each moment I have wasted. There are so few that we have to live in. I hate that I didn’t appreciate each one as precious no matter what. I am learning still.

There is so much more. There has been, there is and there will be so much more I can do that I won’t, that I will fail at, that I will forget to do or find something I will justify being more important. But I am learning—and I hope to still that inner voice somewhat or at least quiet it to a whisper. I hope at the end of it all the regret will be less and less and that whispering chatterbug in my head and heart says instead, “Hey. You did your best which was all anyone can do.”



Monika M. Basile

The plan. Everyone talks about it in one way or another, but no one knows exactly what it is and exactly where it leads.
Sometimes we notice the patterns, the twists and turns, the intricate dance of coincidence—or if you believe as I do—that there are no coincidences, then the intricately magnetic dance into the places we are supposed to be.

We are lucky at times and notice it as it happens. And sometimes we can only see it clearly as we look back on the journey we just took. “Ahhh, now I know why that happened. Now I know why I had to be right in that particular moment, because it brought on this moment here right now.”

Some would call that thinking insane. Some would call it backwards or stupid or silly. Some would call it a variety of names instead of the name I give it. God. That’s the name I choose and that is what I believe. It doesn’t even matter that the people who have been lead into my life don’t believe it at all, or question it or ignore it. They are here as they should be. I am here where I am supposed to be.

It doesn’t mean life is hunky dory or that I have not had immense struggle through many moments just to get to this one moment. It just means that I see how it came to be and I am grateful for the lessons that directed me to this part of my life. But I am more grateful that I can see the pattern—the connection of one incident to another—the connection of lives as if we are all part of some extravagant string of pearls. Each of us is needed to touch each other for the world to wear us well. We are not loose baubles rolling around in this life; an unbroken silver chain runs through us all.

I have been graced lately with seeing how my actions may affect others. Simple actions that I think have no bearing on someone else actually do. I need to be more aware of this. I need to be better at making sure that what I do doesn’t hurt as I go along this unknown path, living a plan that I have no idea about other than—I am supposed to be right here, in this moment and in the next if that is part of it.

We all flounder in life. Each of us have had minutes and days and weeks and months and years of not knowing what the heck we are doing or what in the world is going on. We ask ourselves, “Why me?” or “Why now?” and “Why did this happen?” There aren’t any clear cut answers. Rarely do those answers even come when we are in the midst of our moments. They come later, when we retrace our steps, and sometimes they never come at all.
We still need to have a fumbling sort of faith that there is actually a reason to go through the things we go through. We need to remember—it leads us to now and that it isn’t about only us.

Our journey is not solely about “our own” journey. It is the people we touch along the way. It is about those lives that we pull and push along with us even when we have no idea that a simple act of kindness, or an encouraging word, or just not saying that horrible thing you were thinking—is leading you and whomever you encountered to this moment.

It is a dizzying thought. It’s like trying to see every star in the sky at the exact same time when I think of how every action taken affects someone at some time. Our existence is so much bigger than we could ever imagine and the impact lasts so much longer than a lifetime.

I supposed that is how it was planned.

Monika M. Basile

There was a time when I was a young mother that we had very little—little enough that a church basket gave both the feeling of humiliation and utter gratefulness.

Inside the basket were your typical items; a few cans of green beans and corn, instant potatoes, gravy mix, a ham etc., and something extraordinary—a bag of Oreo cookies. Oreo’s had always been and are my favorite. I remember holding them and trying to figure out when the last time I had one was and I couldn’t recall it. I was grateful for every bit of food that was given, but I was in wonder over the kind soul who thought to put an indulgence in a donation basket. I was incredulous to think that someone actually considered that even people coming from a place of need are deserving of some indulgence and they are deserving of our best.

I am thankful I have learned that lesson early on. I am grateful too that I have witnessed this phenomenon in others.

A woman once told me a story of her father, and how her brothers and she had given him a beautiful cashmere coat for Christmas. The father saw a homeless man on the street. He pulled that coat from his shoulders and wrapped it around the man. The children were all upset; reminding him they could have gotten his old coat and given that away. The father told his children, “When we give, we are to give our best and not our cast offs. Even a man without a coat deserves the best coat to keep him warm. I can get another coat.” The woman was overcome and never forgot what her father had done that day. (I don’t know what the brothers thought about it all as I only knew the woman.)

I get it. A lot of people get it and not enough people get it. We are to give our best and even more important, we are to know that all deserve our best.

We are not to hand the cast offs from our soul to others and expect them then to kiss our shoes. What is truly amazing is that even those receiving the least from others can still be so grateful. These are the good people of the world. How can anyone not want to make a life better? To add the joy of a luxury—like Oreo’s or a beautiful coat is the extra part of remembering someone is human. Filling basic needs of another is humanity—doing so with kindness and respect and a generous spirit—is what makes the giver human.

We should be giving each person in our life the best parts of ourselves and not just the leftovers. We should be fulfilling each need that we are capable of filling. What we don’t realize is that if every human being did this—no one would be needy or lacking or doing without any of the important things.

Sometimes all we can give is our time, a kind word, a smile or a simple hello. How much sweeter it is to go through the day giving away hope than ignoring someone who needs us. And guess what? It costs nothing! It takes nothing from us in any way to give the best of ourselves. We only need to realize how much we actually have to offer and take that first step. Being generous is giving more than is needed or expected. It is opening yourself up to knowing the person next to you is just as valuable as you are no matter where they are, where they have come from or where they are going to.

Giving is not unselfish. It makes you feel better. It’s a boomerang, the more you put out into the world—the better you feel just being in the world.

I don’t quite believe the old adage of you get what you give. You don’t get exactly what you give. You get something more; you get to make a difference. You get to change one small piece of the world for the good.

You get to be the bag of Oreo’s in a life filled with canned green beans.



Monika M. Basile