The memory of my parents and a conversation with God that I am trying to return to.
As a child, I prayed every night. I asked God, with all my heart, to help me become a professional dancer someday.
“God, help me achieve my dream.”
I felt that He listened to me. He gave me the strength to keep trying. And I kept going. Over the years, that dream became my life.
— ◆ —
Then my father became ill with leukemia.
My father was everything to me. He suffered so much during the last years of his life, and yet I never truly thought he would die. I knew he was ill, I could see what was happening, but I could not quite believe I might lose him.
When he died, I became angry with God.
It was not a deliberate decision. I did not sit down one day and declare that God did not exist. I simply stopped talking to Him.
As I put it: I paid Him no mind.
And many years passed that way.
— ◆ —
Now I am beginning to feel the desire to seek Him again. I am trying to talk to Him once more, although I still do not really know how.
At first, I thought I wanted to ask Him for strength. To recover that energy for life, for art, for people. That strength I felt as a child, which helped me keep trying.
But these past few days, while talking about what I carry inside, a sentence emerged that I had never been able to express so clearly:
“I want to receive love without having to earn it.”
— ◆ —
I have spent much of my life loving, caring, helping. Giving comes naturally to me. When I say I want to love sincerely, rather than out of obligation, that is what I mean: to do it because I want to, because it comes from within.
I can love someone even if I do not receive the same love in return. I have experienced that many times.
What I find difficult is receiving and trusting.
Sometimes, when someone shows me affection, a thought appears that keeps me from feeling at ease within that affection:
“Later, this person will stop giving me this love and expect me to keep giving and giving.”
And then I cannot quite believe in it. I find it hard to feel that it can stay, that I do not have to immediately start doing something to hold on to it.
Some time ago, I was able to say: “I want to receive, too.” I discovered how much it would mean to me for someone to think of me on their own initiative. To do something thoughtful without my asking. The gift would not be so much the plan itself as the surprise of feeling that they had remembered me.
Now I am beginning to understand a little more.
I want to be able to feel loved even during a time when I cannot give much. Even if I do not know how to show my love. To receive that affection without feeling that, from that moment on, I owe something.
That would be a great gift to me.
— ◆ —
When I asked myself whether I had ever known a love like that, the answer came immediately:
“My father and my mother.”
And when I thought of my father, I saw it very clearly. I felt that he was proud of me.
Simply because I was his son.
I did not need to dance well. Or succeed. Or achieve something new to prove my worth to him.
I was his son, and he loved me.
Today I return to that memory and realize that I had already known that love. What I find difficult is trusting that I can receive it now, too.
— ◆ —
These past few days, I have said something I am still trying to understand: “God is within me.”
I do not know how to explain much more. I am seeking Him again. Trying to talk to Him after so many years. I do not know where this conversation will take me.
Perhaps, alongside the strength to keep giving, I am seeking to learn how to feel loved when I have nothing to offer.
— ◆ —
As a child, I used to say:
“God, help me achieve my dream.”
Today, I would like to be able to say:
“God, teach me to feel that I am loved without having to earn it.”
And perhaps this is my way of talking to Him again, after so many years of paying Him no mind.
AlitaDePollo
Author: Benito García. Image: BG PHOTO, created with AI.
Instagram: benitogarcia_japon