Recently, I shared a Love + Hope story on Instagram about self-rejection. Turns out a lot of people relate to negative inner talk and the feeling that it's hard to receive love when we think we don't deserve it. (If you missed the story and would like to read the comic, click here.) What I didn't have the opportunity to do on Intagram, that I'd like to do now, is share a Practice of Assurance for after the story.

Practice of Assurance is just Words of Assurance with legs and I needed such a thing after that IG story. Here's what my practice looked like:

I researched slime molds.

Slime molds are not my go-to for warm fuzzies, but science and outer space often are. So when I ran across info about how slime molds are super efficient path-makers and are being used by astrophysicists to help map the universe, I was super curious. I fell down a rabbit hole of slime mold research and became completely delighted at how something so small and undeveloped had such capacity for clever efficiency.

And friends, Love spoke to me in this moment (in examen-speak, we'd call it consolation).

In my heart I could hear a true thing very clearly and it sounded like this:

Please don't confuse smallness with insignificance. Slime molds are more magnificent that you can imagine. You are more magnificent than you can imagine. It all belongs in the family of things. Let yourself be included.

These were the Words of Assurance I needed after dealing with self-rejection.

And so my Practice of Assurance became to look for small things and find wonder in them.

There is no place I have found yet that is so small it is insignificant. That includes me. And it includes you. It includes all of us. So I invite you to look at small things when you're feeling small and wonder about them. Then wonder about yourself. Go one step further and name something wonderful about yourself. If that feels too weird, I get it. Maybe you could take a page from slime molds and acknowledge something clever or efficient about yourself. (Check out this short video about slime molds and outer space here for inspiration).

Here is what I'm wondering most about: If it's easy to reject ourselves and hard to find wonder in ourselves, is it also easy to reject others and hard to find wonder in them? And if we feel like we don't really deserve Love, do we also feel like others don't deserve Love either?

The examen says that we first need to cultivate love within before we can share it with others. This isn't a hard "if, then" statement. There's nuance here. But it's worth consideration. Perhaps our Practice of Assurance when we are feeling small does more than heal our self-rejection. Perhaps it helps prevent rejection altogether. Maybe in the same way a small slime mold can help map the cosmos, a small act of discovering wonder within ourselves can help create a world that welcomes us all.

I'm choosing to believe it's possible.

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