You Are Welcome Here

I have been using an app for daily mindfulness meditations from mindfulness.com.  The meditations come with a short thought video preceding the meditations and on one of these videos I encountered the phrase “you’re welcome here”.  Instead of fighting disruptive thoughts we should instead, acknowledge and welcome them by politely saying, “you’re welcome here”, whenever they arise.

I took this practice out of meditation and into my daily life.  There are times I become so overwhelmed by my emotions and thoughts that I feel incredibly hopeless and just cry for hours.  This has been happening a lot lately.  I know that I am in a season of turmoil like so many others right now, but I find myself surrounded by those that are well, not.  

It’s been a hard road these past five years.  Lay off, after lay off, after lay off only to be met by a pandemic and I haven’t even mentioned my medical issues.  I turned the big 4-0 in the pandemic while living at home, without a job and piled high with credit card bills that were half medical bills and half my trying to have some fun.  I did eventually find work, but it was manual, cheap, labor and barely allowed me to eat while taking care of my hefty minimum payments.  Things have turned the corner in that I have a new career position, however, the pay leaves a lot to be desired.  Combine that with a long commute and being bored out of my mind and you understand why I feel that my step forward might actually be a step backward if I cannot catapult from this situation into a much better one within a year.

Driving home the other day I passed by a nice large house where four or five kids are usually playing in the yard.  Instead of kids, there was a giant sign wishing a very happy 40th to the lady of the house and I just wept.  All it really takes is one person I don’t even know to send me into a tail spin.  The feelings of feeling left behind, abandoned, forgotten and not to mention pathetic washed over me.  I don’t know, I just always assumed everything would work out and I would have everything I wanted and needed…. For me, however, life has ended up very differently.  On top of that, I don’t know if I can play catch up at this point.  That is what terrifies me the most right now and poor God has to listen to it almost every night.

This morning was no different.  I was sitting at my kitchen table having my favorite breakfast of egg and olive toast and a piping hot cup of matcha tea when I just lost it over my current situation and that stupid happy birthday sign in my neighbor’s front yard.  But this morning, I remembered the whole idea of not fighting our disruptive thoughts and instead welcoming those thoughts and so I did.  I said to myself, “oh, yeah, You’re welcome here you thoughts and feelings of being forgotten.  You’re welcome here you thoughts and feelings of feeling lost and overwhelmed.  You’re welcome here you thoughts and feelings of being pathetic.  You’re welcome here you thoughts and feelings of never catching up.  You’re welcome here. You’re welcome here.  You Are Welcome Here.”  Something interesting happened the moment I stopped fighting those disruptive thoughts and feelings and instead accepted them.… They Vanished!  Whatever was coming over me vanished.  I even tried thinking about them again, but the power they had over me had vanished.  I’ve heard time and time again that acceptance is the only path forward and in this instance the saying definitely rings true. 

I’ve experienced this phenomenon  a few times prior to this morning’s tail spin and I am going to do my best to stop these thoughts and feelings earlier in the process by just accepting them by saying to myself and to them: You are welcome here.

I wanted to pen this in case it helps someone else like it has helped me.  I’d love to hear if it does.  
Shalom