LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Amanda Doyle!

No one is keeping score

Hello, and happy Super Bowl Sunday to all who celebrate!

I have spent much of the last week driving across so many states for so many wonderful events, but now I am happily back at home (for a little bit), catching up with this community and counting the minutes until I get to read a fresh batch of love letters from you!

I’m excited to finally share with you a gorgeous, powerful letter from our very special guest this week: the one and only Amanda “Sister” Doyle, whom so many of you know from the glorious We Can Do Hard Things podcast! And friends, this letter does not disappoint.

When Amanda downloaded her letter, she had no idea that she was slated to be our guest on Super Bowl Sunday, but that rascal Love in fact provided her with an incredible, extended, very relatable football analogy. Like a lot of you, Amanda was game (see what I did?) to receive the words of Love but didn’t think it would happen. And it didn’t for a bit. But then the floodgates opened, and oh what a gorgeous message she received. Amanda is here to show us the way out of a predicament that so many of us struggle with: letting the love/heart part of ourselves play alongside the brain/reason part.

Spoiler alert: she comes to terms with the fact that as long as she is trying to win at life and continually keeping score (and she is, and in fact is the only one keeping score of her life), she will not be satisfied. I know well that struggle to surrender, but oh what awaits you when you do!

A HUGE thank you to Sister, who reminds us that when we surrender to the voice of unconditional love, we can’t lose.

We can’t lose.

We can’t lose.

We can’t lose.

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about satisfaction?

Oh my little grizzled bear, reaching your fist into a tree trunk filled with honey and bees — you know how fleeting satisfaction has always been for you, and once again, I remind you that isn’t your fault.

The world is full of alluring people, places, and things, and you have been outfitted with huge and hungry appetites. Good for you, for chasing it all down and consuming it, whatever “it” was in the moment: love, food, adventure, beauty, mind-altering chemicals of various and sundry variety, achievement, self-sacrifice, this place, that place, this thing, that thing. You loved it all and wanted it all and hunted it down, and gobbled it up or tried to conquer it, and for a while, maybe, it delivered satisfaction — and then inevitably the moment came when “it” no longer worked. When the thing no longer delivered, and you were left, as they say in the rooms of recovery, feeling restless, irritable, and discontent.

You have been a relentless hunter for the taste of satisfaction, and I am glad of it, for it is that hunger which finally led you to me.

There are two ways a person can respond once she realizes that nothing in the world will keep her satisfied. One response is to become depressed and jaded — to give up. The other response is to, well, GIVE UP! But with capital letters and an emphatic exclamation point. If the things of this world can never satisfy you, then step out of the world and into the field of the mystical, and just turn yourself in.

Give up into how loved you are.

Give up into how wild it is that you can hear me.

Give up into not understanding how any of this works, but doing it, anyhow.

Surrendering into this conversation with me has been the only thing that has never bored you, or disappointed you, or hurt you, or caused you to hurt another. Is this your longest-lasting love story? Twenty-five years we have been meeting here and still, you never know what I’m going to say next. You never know what I’m going to tell you to do. You never know what the next sentence will be.

You, who loves to control things, who loves to understand things.

What could ever be satisfying about THAT? What could ever be satisfying about control and understanding? Why be so mundane as to need to know how things work?

Give it up, my love. Call off the search for satisfaction and understanding, and replace it instead with a surrender into mystery. And now that you know my voice, just do what your tattoo says: STAY WITH ME.

I love you, I’m right here, and we’re just getting started.

Prompt

As always, this classic banger will always serve you well: Dear Love, what would you have me know today? But! If you feel like exploring the idea of satisfiability, you can ask Love what it would have you know about how your standards around satisfaction might change. What would Love have you know about having, doing, being enough?