In my work with my therapist, we have been talking about the tapes that play in my head. You know the ones. Those messages we send ourselves without even thinking about it, that running dialogue (or sometimes a monologue) that we keep thinking speaks truth just because it is so darn loud, or persistant, or sometimes both.

I told Doc yesterday that I wanted to make some of the tapes stop, so that I can do a kind of mental "reset". (I suppose if I owned an iPod I would've used the term "shuffle".) I expected him to tell me how to do that, or at least ask me why I wanted to. (He's great with the questions, y'know.) Instead he asked me if I could try, just for now, to hear the voices of pain, frustration, disappointment, anxiety, and inadequacy--just stop and listen to the inner messages without adopting them as gospel. He asked me to try to keep the ones that were true, and to acknowledge the others but move on beyond them.

I told him that I was afraid--that I had relied on the tapes for so long as my soundtrack of sorts, that I wasn't sure what would happen if I heard them but didn't believe them. Would I stop trusting the parts of me that really are true?

He told me, "You'll learn to know what is true, what is right. You'll be able to tell the difference between habitual negativity and thoughtful sensitivity. Trust yourself for that."

At my clergy group tonight, I got some feedback from the colleagues who had come to the funeral I did last month, for the woman from my congregation whom we tragically lost. (They didn't come to evaluate me, but to be there in solidarity with me. The crowd was so large that I didn't even see two of them.)

As they began telling me about what it was like, how my words effected them, the expressions of tenderness in the face of tragedy they witnessed between me and this crowd of 400 people, I felt and heard them--those old tapes. I recognized some of them right away, like a musical score I can hum mindlessly while driving just from sheer muscle memory.

But I forced myself to listen. And to hear the pain and fear in those messages. And then I reminded myself that most of those just aren't true, not anymore. I have a choice of what to believe, and I can recognize the truth when I hear it.

Someday me and my heart are going to make beautiful music together.