The burden of love
A friend and I were speaking about how her mother doesn’t want to be a burden, and I said my mother said that all the time and it used to just exasperate me. I would always respond, “Well you are a burden, you are my burden, because I love you.”
I’m so good at giving advice and telling people how it is that I fool myself. As my fortunes reversed themselves, I found people coming out of the woodwork trying to give me something and it messed with my spirit. I don’t like that, don’t give me anything, my whole being would say.
Like my Nantucket gals, they pulled off a coup to get me on a trip before I left the country because they wanted to say happy birthday and show their love since I’m a Mexican hairless. Or my massage therapist who wants to give me a free massage so that I feel good. Or my hair stylist who said he would massage my scalp for free as I needed it. Or my partner who keeps picking up the slack and thinking of nice things to do for me.
What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know I don’t want to be a burden?
I wonder if everyone else who is given the gift of grace knows how to accept it? Or am I the only one out here who looks a gift horse in the mouth and says, “No, thank you.”
Learning to say yes to love is possibly the biggest lesson of my life right now.