The Chasm Within

This morning, during my private Just 10,  as I took a brisk walk, I pondered the reason for my weight gain.

For the past, 25 years, I've tried to fill the emptiness inside with food.   I have yet to succeed, despite the extra weight.  I know how to eat right, all about portion control, and exercise.  This knowledge means nothing as long as the emptiness calls me.    Food is love to me and I can never seem to get enough.  I throw food into the emptiness to soothe the ache.

My weight gain started after I left the convent.  It was a traumatic parting.  I couldn't process all that had happened.  I was tormented by the "whys" of it.  I felt unworthy, a failure.  I was heart broken.  Food helped dull the pain.  It wasn't long and my figure resembled that of my beloved grandmothers and great aunts. In time, I understood how my attachment to food started when I was still very young.  My best memories are centered around food and family.  I used those memories to hide the memories of lost innocence, memories that were too painful to acknowledge and that still leave me feeling damaged and broken.

Today, I knew, with great certainty, that it's time to make peace with the emptiness.  When I listen to people's stories, the real stories in between their words, I hear the emptiness within them.  I don't think I've ever gotten to know a person who isn't broken and empty in some way.  That emptiness explains so much, the drive to succeed, materialism, consumerism, addictions, promiscuity, wasted hours in front of the computer.    All these things are attempts to fill that chasm within.  They can not.  It is time to make peace with this emptiness.  This emptiness can't be filled in this lifetime and yet, this emptiness can open the door to hope.

I imagined myself standing at the edge of a precipice, looking down into a swirling, jet black chasm of darkness.   This emptiness is part of me.  It's part of all of us.  I can lean over the abyss and say, "I accept this as part of me, as part of my human existence."   It is the unknown, the incomplete, the imperfect, the broken pieces of my life.  It is my emptiness.  It's always been there and will remain with me until I leave this life.  I am humbled before it. 

This emptiness can be the source of compassion for others who struggle with their own emptiness, their own chasm within.  It can also be the source of great hope.  I, who still believe in the existence of a loving God, despite events and people who argued the contrary,  remember St. Augustine's words,  "Our hearts are restless, until they rest in thee."  I can not fill this emptiness, especially not with food.  It simply is and so am I, empty, broken and yet, infinitely loved.  Peace.