Tag: hurt

Vulnerable = Lovable

It’s always an honor to hear someone really share their pain. Not wallow, mind you. Not over-exposing their fiery emotions and gory  details. Something real and raw from a tender and seldom seen place.

The heartfelt wounds that still hurt from some kind of past or unnoticed pain. The cries of the heart. The reaching out to be heard, and then the comfort realized.

It always strikes me that at the very time when someone is most revealed and open they are at the same time supremely vulnerable and yet exquisitely lovable.

Truly human. It’s not just an honor because it is so rare …(it happens usually through time and trust and other options are unfavorable)…it’s an honor because there is within that moment a genuine glimpse of glory.

“The glory of God revealed is the human most fully alive.” -Irenaeus of Lyons

We have a rebirth–a fully alive moment–in those sort of times: Vulnerability through the struggles and between destinations. There the messy becomes beautiful. Redeemed.

Even though it feels really risky, the chance to be truly seen and heard in our vulnerability engenders compassion because what is common between us transcends the boundaries that keep us isolated.

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Love Deeply (from Henri Nouwen’s Journal)

I’m getting so much out of this little book!

(I really recommend getting a copy. I saw one on Amazon for $1.50 (used). What a bargain!)

Henri Nouwen gathered his thoughts and pennend notes for his personal use during a difficult 6 months of reflection and healing. They were meant as private notes, but after 8 years a few friends encouraged him to have them organized and published sensing other soul searchers would be encouraged by them. His pain is often palpable and humble and his words are like food for kindred spirits. I’m grateful he was so brave.

page 59

Love Deeply
Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that break the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide no to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.

The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. They will become part of your self and thus gradually build a community within you.

Those you have deeply love become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you. Those who are alive within you will recognize those who live around you. The wider the community of your heart, the wider the community around you. Thus the pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear.

Everything Happens for a Reason?…probably not

Part of my journey, spiritually, has been to move from a fundamentalist upbringing, to an Evangelical / post-conservative theological formal training, and then toward “the mysteries” (i.e. mystic tendencies). What brought me there? Tremendous pain. I usually don’t talk of it for too long. Maybe there’s a memoir in me that should come to light, but the progression is palpable.

In “the mysteries” this means that I don’t think of suffering as a problem, sorrow as un-wellness, or bouts of profound unhappiness as a sign that I have too little faith. In fact, most of the biblical characters were kind of tortured souls. It’s a more recent construct that we should think the life of faith has a “Sunshine Mountain” feel to it.

So, I wanted to write out a few thoughts about what Mark Lepper posed out there on the Twitter-verse (see lower image).

My initial Twitter response (you see below) was less than 140 characters, so I thought I’d add a bit more.

@thelepper Nah. That notion helps us cope, but we can’t possibly verify it. It’s part of “the mysteries”

For just a moment…

Imagine your child kills himself. The most horrid thought (you needn’t linger there).

In the first few days, probably 20 people will tell you, “Everything happens for a reason.” Or, they’ll say, “All things work together for good…” You know the verse, right?

Rubbish.

(Probably most people don’t realize how out of context that verse is used that way. Erroneously they utilize just a part of it as a “band-aid platitude” to offer kindness.)

There are a great many things that have no good explanations and will not. The reasons won’t be revealed later either. On earth or in heaven. It really doesn’t work that way. And it really shouldn’t. Otherwise movement toward maturity would be at stake.

Really, it would be too confusing for us that God would answer these questions, so don’t count on an inquiry at the “ask the author” line in heaven, my dear friends.

When the pain of suffering wallops you and you can’t shelve your doubts long enough to work through the real hardship of it, one temptation is to consider that God must be malevolent or AWOL, instead of considering that we can’t possibly know the answer.

It is in the unknowing that we become enlightened to the ways of God.

It seems the two most common tactics (ways of coping) in tragedy are…

1. Try to believe that something horrible or evil has some sort of good redemptive reason, or will eventually come to something good because of it.

(Though it is true that God makes it his business to redeem everything…eventually….somehow…. we can’t think of this backward when we come into pain, and try jumping ahead. Pain can serve a point.)

2. Realize that so much is unexplainable and let our hope and faith erode or dissolve.

But there is a third option. And maybe more than just one more (you can let me know). Another way that’s been employed since humans have had optimism and spirituality (read: a very long time) is…

“the way of the mysteries”. And it’s not a cop out.

It’s farsighted. It’s a perspective that holds that the beauty we witness in this world is almost out of place in the nastiness and madness of it. It’s the idea of (good) ideals we all seem to possess that point to a greater, underlying and sustaining beauty and goodness obscured by the ways of the world, suffering, and the hardships of being human.

To embrace our situation as the mystics do is to not shun hardship or revel in it, but rather to let the pain refine us and make us wise. Oh, and it hurts. It hurts like hell.  And it, in some real sense, beats the hell out of us, and makes us endearing and compassionate. Beautiful.

The trouble is that if we’re satisfying with answers like, “Hey, friend! Don’t worry there’s a reason this horrible thing is happening,” then we are of very little good to those who are truly suffering.

In fact, our notions of “reasons” are often so pale and wanting. They just couldn’t possibly be sturdy enough. They don’t reveal what is legit and accurate.

Only when we can sit there alongside in the pain of those who hurt, and even take a part of the sorrow itself do we find we can make our way, honestly. And too, we must sit in our own pain. It’s uncomfortable. It’s dark. Sometimes horrid.

But to have the permission to hurt can send us toward wellness. It shows us that great sorrow comes on powerfully, and hurts badly, but does not have the final word. In the process of living well and deeply do we like a tender shoot become oaks of maturity and grace.

Please friends, be careful and don’t make a mockery of pain by disrespecting it or minimizing it (for yourself or anybody else). There is no human life without pain. There too is no growth without it. That’s the bit about incarnationality: The divine enters the human experience. That is our model.

So very deeply have I hurt, but now deeply can I love.

It’s true that redemption is chosen.

To be chosen it must first be acknowledged.

(that’s my longer answer)

on Getting Tired

Here’s a little reminder that everyone gets tired.

Everyone gets unbalanced.

Maybe you’ll be touched deeply and start crying when you hear a rapper slinging rhymes, which is really weird, but I did that.

Maybe you’ll just feel a heaviness in your heart that you can’t pinpoint. A slow burning ache, like the weight of the broken world is pushing in and perched on your sternum.

Maybe you’ll see relationships so broken and confusing and full of turmoil that you’ll start to disconnect.

Maybe you’ll snap at your kids, or get angry at a stranger whose story you can’t possibily know.

And grace will leak away from you and your ideals will be shelved, and you’ll wonder if you’re really a person who still believes in goodness anymore.

Here’s a word for you…and for me….

It hurts to be alive.

There are mysteries we want to know but can’t unravel.

You. Will. Get. Tired.

In this sorrow we are not alone, because we are the same.

(If you’d like to share your worry today or your burden, please do. In the comment section or using the contact me tab. I’ll pray for you, and maybe you can pray for me.)

Picking your Neurosis Before it Picks You

Presentiment
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Pulpolux !!! via Compfight
I’m neurotic. You are too. Ready for a pleasant surprise? Neurosis is normal. Anxiety is normal. Both are…get this: helpful.

 

Neurosis is how normal people cope with a changing environment.
As stressful situations enter our lives we have anxiety, and we deal with it in a number of ways. Neurotic ways. A neurotic person (like you or me) is just someone who is dealing with anxiety-producing pain, hurt, or stress. You know, the normal stuff of life. If we didn’t become anxious we wouldn’t have the motivating to improve our situation. We wouldn’t be…human.

 

It’s only when our neurotic method of coping becomes a main characteristic in our life does it fall into a category called “a neurotic disorder“. (Neurosis should not be mistaken for psychosis, which refers a loss of connection with reality and will include delusions or hallucinations. To be clear, both disorder and psychosis should be helped by a trained pro.)

 

For a bit of a primer here is the insight of Dr. George Boeree. Effects of neurosis can involve these (all too familiar) states:
• Anxiety, sadness, depression, anger, irritability, mental confusion, low sense of self-worth. Again, normal stuff we experience from time to time.
• Behavioral symptoms like phobic avoidance, vigilance, impulsive and compulsive acts, or lethargy…on the other side of the spectrum.
• Cognitive problems like unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, repeating thoughts and obsessions, habitual fantasizing, negativity, and cynicism.
• Interpersonal problems like unhealthy dependency, aggressiveness, perfectionism, schizoid isolation (which sounds like the name of a punk band, right? Actually, it relates to social avoidance), and socio-culturally inappropriate behaviors, among a few. [1]
In each case a certain amount of any of these traits fall into the range of normal human behavior in the face of stress. It is the prolonged characteristics which signal a greater problem, and needed healing.
You could be more typical than you’ve imagined. I wonder if we go around thinking we are incredibly messed up, when we aren’t doing so terribly bad after all. It helps to periodically assess how you are doing on this front.
Personally, I was reflecting on all this. I was rather relieved to learn that neurosis is normal. Am I the only one who didn’t know this? I took some inventory of my own neurotic outcroppings. (I felt brave at that moment.)
• How much thought was I putting into my neurotic behavior? Little.
• Were any neurotic behaviors the “boss of me”? Yep.

For instance, sometimes I crave and ingest sugar. Sometimes I numb-out with tech, or some distraction. Sometimes I grow irritable and wallow a bit. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop before we both get too embarrassed.

 

I thought, “What if I could be more conscious of how I direct my neurosis, since stress and the neurotic response are in fact unavoidable?” I can’t be rid of them, but I can make wiser choices.
Instead of opening the fridge when I feel stressed, I’ll do a set or two of arm curls. Or, maybe I’ll make a journal entry, pray, meditate, or take a walk instead of strolling the information super highway to distract myself. (I thought I’d bring in a 1990s internet term to keep you on your toes.)
Have you considered some of your unconscious (yet normal) neurotic mechanisms recently?  How could they be better directed in your life?
I’d love to hear your thoughts or comments on the topic.

What are some of the neurotic things you do?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis