The Walking Stick Journal

Stepping Stones of Transformation

An Unfolding Manuscript

by 

C.D. Baker

Chapter Six: Experiencing Experience

The story of our lives is that of swirling, pulsating, intersecting layers of experiences. Experiences are encounters with reality. Since God is the ultimate reality, every one of them is mysteriously connected to him.

I feel a great temptation to throw nets over my experiences–thought webs that discard their poetic complexity in order to convert them into shrunken bundles of analysis that I can manage. I too often substitute my intellect for God’s Presence and, in so doing, reduce my life story to a sequence of calculations.

But what if I could simply trust experiences to be what they are—rich, vibrating opportunities to grow in wisdom?

What if I dared to connect to them rather than dissect them or discount them or even discard them? What might the Spirit show me through them? 

***

June, 2019

Am looking around Bill’s office. I can hardly believe that I’ve been coming for a full year now. I thought this might be five sessions or so. I’m getting more comfortable with him, but I’m wondering if I should tell him about last week’s experience with an acupuncturist when my body started shaking all over. It was so crazy.

He comes in, settles in his chair, and I just blurt it out.

“Body memories,” Bill answers. 

I offer a blank stare.

“If we have no way to release traumas, our bodies hold them. This happens especially when we’re very young. Children embody trauma.”

I suddenly wonder if I’m holding something. I tell him that I always felt that there was something dark–something very wrong down deep. 

He waits.

An old memory then lunges from somewhere. “When I was about four I found my mother in her bed covered in blood.”

Bill abruptly leans very far forward.

“I can still see it. She was on her back, head on the pillow. The whole bottom half of her sheet was red.” I then add. “Oh yeah, I was sent running for our landlady who was a nurse.” 

I wait for Bill to respond but he was just staring. I tapped a finger on my note pad. “Mom later told me she had trailed blood back and forth to the bathroom, too, but I don’t remember seeing that.”

Bill’s eyes suddenly narrow. “You just recounted a terrible, traumatizing event in your fragile childhood as if it were just a series of facts.”

I stiffen. “It was a very long time ago.” 

He takes a few breaths. I can tell he’s processing a great deal and I feel confused. What am I missing?

“The fact that you recounted such a traumatic experience without any reference to emotion indicates that you have repressed it through your life. This happened at an age when this was most certainly embedded in your body.” 

I want to shrug but don’t. I actually didn’t feel anything when I told him that story. I deflect by telling him that my mother had given birth to a baby girl a week or so before the hemorrhaging. The baby, Marcia Jean, had only lived an hour, and that I had always felt sorry about that loss for my mother. Apparently she hadn’t received much comfort.

“And no funeral?” 

“No. She said she never even held Marcia…that she watched a nurse carry her away in a little cardboard box.”

Bill seems very troubled. “Terrible. I feel for your mom.” He looks at me. “What about you…after your trauma?”

What is he asking?

“Did anyone recognize what this meant for you?”

“My mother almost died; it wasn’t about me.”

Bill grumbles. “So your experience was ignored.” He clears his throat. “This was a key moment in your life. What happened was a foundational event upon which a great deal of future anxiety was built.”

I listen, respectfully, but not convinced. I’ll have to think about this. 

***

July, 2019

I am on the Outer Banks and still processing why it is that I compress experiences into thoughts. Bill’s had a lot to say about that. Maybe he’s on to something. What could happen if I just let them come alive their own way?

Walking on the beach with my dog, I remembered the music of the creek and the oneness with the trees, and was glad that they had made it past my mind. But they seemed to be exceptions. Or were they?

I watched Dakota–my white, ten-year-old poodle mix–dashing along the sand, only to look sideways at me with what I will always believe was a smile. I laughed. It felt good to see my dog happy. 

I have no demands on him, no expectations, no grand visions. I just enjoy him being happy and healthy. I think that’s all that love seeks. 

Then something hits me: What if this very moment is an experience of how God looks at me? Maybe he’d be thrilled to watch me smile sideways as I run, free. No demands, no grand visions for my life…just hoping to see me happy and whole. What if?

I get back to the house and drop into a chair. Dakota jumps on my lap, puts his front legs on my shoulders, and presses his neck against mine. I scratch his ears and then wonder if God loves me as much as my dog does. Wouldn’t that be something? I feel sudden warmth in deep places, and for once I simply receive the experience for the gift that it is.