Being human - Life is calling

Embracing The Ouch …

It is counter intuitive right?

Because our, or at least my natural instinct, is to move away from that which hurts.

What I would like to say, especially in view of my profession, is that I’ve got this stuff nailed. But of course, this is real life and I am one of those real live, messy, imperfect humans! One that has to learn, learn and learn again, how to be with the inevitable. The ouch.

None of us like the ouch.

Yet to refuse it, is to allow it to cause a whole heap more ouch’s until we turn to face it.

I experience this again and again with the ouch of grief.

Every time a new wave knocks me to the ground, I just want to dust myself down and return to normal duty’s as if it didn’t and it doesn’t, hurt.

Like most of the human population, I don’t want to register the pain because I don’t like feeling pain and I do like not feeling pain!

So every time, I have to re-learn all over again, that the only way to live with the ouch that accompanies grief, is by acknowledging its presence and effect and responding with compassion rather than frustration.

Yet my first instinct is still to fight it. I want to ‘win’. By winning I mean, I want to be ok and not let the grief leave me feeling not ok.

But, it is only when I can own, accept and embrace my ouch inducing not ok, that I begin to become a little more ok!

It’s a paradox.

One that is eased when I am reminded that it is ok to acknowledge my grief. I can then relax and stop fighting it. I remember that this does not mean that I am failing, it is not a sign of weakness, it does not mean that I am wallowing, or that I will feel miserable for ever more. It simply means that the grief needs some care and attention.

I’ve had a few reminders of this recently.

I arrived at my house group the other week to discover that we were watching a Nooma DVD (short Rob Bell film on a life theme), called Matthew. None of us knew what it was about. But it turned out to be on death, grief and the importance of making time and space to allow WHATEVER thoughts and feelings need to come out. It wasn’t talking about just allowing the nice/positive/good/acceptable/Christian thoughts and feelings but ALL the feelings, especially the ugly and unwanted ones.

It was a timely reminder.

And it came only two short days after a colleague had reminded me of exactly the same thing about making time and space to allow grief. Not banishing it. Not distracting away from it. But actively inviting it to come and take up its rightful place within my being and my day.

Both of these served to remind me that I do not need to FEAR my grief or any of the feelings that accompany it.

What I do need is to keep practising over and over again what it is to recognise, allow, value, respect, accommodate, trust, welcome and tend to my grief.

As in every time it arises.

Because I have noticed that whenever I finally stop fighting and say to myself, ‘Ok, you feel miserable/angry/resentful/whatever and you are allowed to feel that, just be with it’, it begins to dissipate.

And when I remember to go easy on myself and change down a gear, life becomes so much easier to manage.

I’ve been reflecting on this recently whilst out on my bike. I’ve taken to cycling to work once a week. It allows me to incorporate a bit of physical activity with time out in the fresh air amongst what is otherwise a day spent sat on my backside, inside. I like it. The cycling that is.

Anyway, as I was huffing and puffing my way up a hill recently, repeatedly changing in to lower gears, it occurred to me that this is like life. As in, when things get difficult, or the pressure is on, or we have an unexpectedly high work load, or we are simply dealing with emotional stuff, we, read I, can sometimes expect myself to just keep travelling in exactly the same gear at exactly the same speed.

How ridiculous.

If I don’t even do this to myself on the bike, why do it to myself in life.

What I really need of course is to change down a gear, slow down, make allowance for the new situation and reduce my expectations accordingly. In other words, to partner with myself to be able to keep going but at a realistic pace, rather than setting myself up to fail by attempting to continue in the same gear and at the same pace.

Sigh.

No matter how much I think I know this stuff, I still have to learn afresh every time the new wave hits. Ugh! I wish I was a faster learner!

But, there is another side to facing death, grief and the accompanying ouch. For if we can face it front on, it can urge us to complete an ongoing reassessment of life. What is important and what is not. What gets squeezed out or constantly postponed and what am I going to do about it.

As a result, one of the steps I have taken is to book my return flight to New Zealand. The place where the family I lived with and the beauty and culture of the land was so significantly life changing and healing. It was here that I entered in to a relationship with the living God. Life has never been the same again. Thankfully.

But, it has been a whole decade now since I’ve managed to return. Afterall, NZ is a long way to go and it is expensive. Legitimate reasons right? But this year, when asked to go, I didn’t hesitate. No more delaying what is important.

None of us can guarantee how long our future will be or how much time lay ahead to see the places or people we love. And so, I booked my ticket. Not for next year or the year after or in another decades’ time. I don’t want another single year to pass without doing this so important thing.

Nothing will be the same of course. All will have changed in the past decade. The people, the place and of course me. But I need to go. And I want to go. So I am going.

A few months after booking said flight the tax man very kindly granted me a generous tax rebate to fund my trip. Result! The plus side of my reduced capacity to work and thus to earn this year!

Whilst discussing this NZ trip with my supervisor, who was able to own and express their envy (!), they shared with me how a friend of theirs who was rather wealthy, had always had a dream to go to a particular country. They put it off and put it off until the unspeakable happened. They got a terminal diagnosis and were in too poor health to go. Whilst this friend was looking head long in to the face of death with no choice to go back and do the things they had wished to do, they urged my supervisor not to make the same mistake.

Wise words.

Ones we would do well to heed whilst we still can.

It is all too easy to busy and distract ourselves from anything unpleasant for the entire duration of our lives only to arrive at the shores of death to realise that we never quite got around to doing what we really wanted.

I don’t want that.

No matter how short or long, how painful or how unpredictable this thing called life is, or how utterly awful the death of someone I love is, I still want to try and of course at times fail, to look both life and death square in the eye. I want not just to see the ugliness of pain, suffering and premature death but also to see the great beauty that life still offers.

I don’t want to miss what is possible because of what is not. And if I have to slow down again and again and again to allow more healing to happen to facilitate the longer-term goals and desires, then that is ok. (Sometimes!).

I don’t want to drift through life and in to death. Instead I choose to proactively engage, embrace and take steps towards that which is important. Even when this means slowing down AGAIN to allow for more healing.

At least I’m trying to.

What is it that YOU have delayed and postponed and not made the time or space to make happen in your life?

Time is limited.

For us all.

Make it count.

Grief Revisited …

Grief never really goes away but sometimes it feels closer than others. And these past few weeks have been and continue to be one of those times when its presence is unavoidable. And perhaps that is it, I’ve been avoiding it, happily whiling away the summer immersed in the wonders of denial. I don’t know. But what I do know is it has hit me again with full force. And it hurts. A lot.

First off it got triggered through a seemingly innocent Pixar film. ‘Brave’, in case you were wondering. So much rich material around the mother/daughter relationship, much of which reminded me of the lessons and gifts that Margaret gave me in her mothering of me. By the end of the film, I was sobbing. A good healthy release I thought.

But it continued to simmer beneath the surface for a few weeks. And then an unexpected encounter with the sister who looks so like Margaret, left me totally floored. KO’d they call it in Boxing terms. And it was only the count down on the alarm and the call of my responsibility’s that dragged me back up to face it all again.

I just wasn’t prepared to be knocked clean out by the weight of the grief again. Not that I’m sure we can ever really be prepared. And if we could, perhaps we would simply duck out of its way.

But when these grief phases hit me, those individuals who have been there and just get it, become TOTALLY invaluable. Because grief is painful and lonely enough without being surrounded by people who don’t get it. So when you find those who do, talk to them!

Because grief isn’t something we simply ‘deal with’ or ‘get shot of’.

Grief is something that comes to us and we have to walk it through, feeling it, until it dissipates again. Not that it ever goes away entirely. But it does move out of the foreground at times. At least, that is my experience.

And herein lay one of the difficulties in understanding mental and emotional health.

We live in an age of the instant. Most things can be accessed in an instant.

We want something.

We get it.

Now.

No waiting.

Whether it’s the latest box set online, a car on credit or any other stuff.

No one wants to wait for anything anymore.

We want stuff. And we want it now. Even if we have to work so many hours that we pay with the quality of our life/health.

But when it comes to our health, we can’t have things in an instant. We have to wait. We can’t simply buy our health to be as we want it to be. We have to engage with the process of healing. Even if you can afford to skip some queues by going private. And this process takes time and it brings frustration and a whole bunch of other usually unwanted feelings.

It’s how it is.

There is no other way.

Sure, we can get meds to take away this or take away that but even they come at a cost of side effects.

Health is one of the few areas where no matter how much money we have or how hard we pray, we still have to walk the path of healing and growth. (And ultimately, the path of deterioration in to death!)

There is no short cut for healing.

No quick fix.

No miracle pill.

Or even prayer.

It’s just hard.

And any denial or glossing over of that fact, makes it harder.

Unfortunately, our culture just wants to pay or pray to get rid of anything it doesn’t want to feel. And this applies as much to a broken limb as to a broken heart.

We want it better and we want it better now. And we’re willing to pay.

But there are no instant magical cures.

The human body and soul can break. And when they do, they need time and care to heal. No amount of money can pay to fast track this.

We don’t like this. We want the meds to spare us or God to heal us in an instant. And when these don’t happen, we often just don’t know what to do with ourselves and our frustrations, disappointments, resentments and plain sorrows.

We haven’t learned. We want health given to us on a plate. We don’t want to engage with a process that can evoke more pain, to reach the place of healing.

We don’t like it.

And I am no exception.

I don’t like feeling full of sorrow. I don’t like the emotional fatigue that accompanies it. I don’t like the loss of energy. And I don’t like not knowing how long it will last.

I just don’t like it. In fact, I totally ****** hate it. (And of the course the anger part of grief is SO socially unacceptable!). I Understand it. But that doesn’t afford me a fast pass through it.

However, I am learning not to waste my currently diminished energy reserves on fighting the process. Some of the time!

If I feel crap, I cut myself some slack. Mostly! I let myself off the hook a bit. I pull back. I say no. I take any self imposed pressure off. I tend to myself in the way that I need. Just as I might encourage another to do.

Because sometimes, this business of being a human can really hurt.

And what none of us need when we’re hurting is to put ourselves under unnecessary pressure. Sure, life doesn’t stop for any of us. But we can look at our loads realistically and decide what can wait.

We can in short, look after ourselves with compassion and understanding rather than impatience and condemnation.

I’ve experienced a lot of sorrow these past weeks and I continue to do so. I’ve also heard about a lot from others. From friends. From neighbours; a suicide at the train station. And from a film, A Star is Born. Beautiful but devastating and topical.

Death.

Grief.

Loss.

Endings.

Disappointments.

Life.

Sometimes it just hurts.

Pretending this is not so is more damaging than finding the courage to face it.

We all love instant gratification.

But we seldom grow through it. Anything worthwhile having, especially our health, takes time. Time to nurture and care for and time to heal when it gets damaged, hurt or broken in some way.

We don’t get to choose how long the process will take. We get to choose only how we will treat ourselves whilst going through it.

Patience, compassion and a capacity to recognise the presence of God, are absolutely key.

On being strong …

I feel compelled to write about the idealised notion of being strong. Of course, it is not possible to write about being strong without also writing about being weak, for these are opposing sides of the same coin.

As in, the coin of humanity.

Us.

You.

And me.

In recent weeks, I keep hearing people talk about their ‘need to be strong’.

This is classic black and white, either/or, thinking in terms of absolutes. Either I am strong or I am weak, with little awareness much less acceptance that we are all a combination of strength and weakness. This is what makes us whole.

Let me explain.

There is a culturally driven, not always conscious idea that being strong is the only acceptable mode for any human to admit to. This means that people fall in to the black and white trap of thinking if you are not strong, you must be weak. A seemingly unacceptable mode to admit to.

But here’s the thing.

No human is only strong, all the time, in every way. Except perhaps, the exceptionally deluded. This means that in real terms, we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Most would agree to this in intellectual or theoretical terms but when it comes to real felt sense terms, most of us struggle to admit to needing help, feeling vulnerable or simply not being on our game, for fear that this makes us WEAK.

As weak is a mode that our culture has indoctrinated us to instinctively deny experiencing, we may consequently engage in all manner of cover up ops to conceal our perceived weakness.

If we think about it, this is really rather animalistic. For it is animals that conceal their weakness in order to avoid becoming a target for a stronger prey.

Do us humans, who pride ourselves on our ability to reason as differentiating us from the animal kingdom, really treat each other no differently from how animals operate. As in, the strong attack the weak? Yes, there is of course truth in this.

Whilst we can all be guilty of using our power and our privilege without conscious examination, there will always be those who intentionally capitalise on the weakness of others. Yet this is not a reason to disown or deny our weaknesses, but a need to discern those worthy of sharing them with.

This makes our desire to be seen as strong rather than weak, or both, an expression of preservation as well as at times, of pride.

Yet when we go a little deeper we have to acknowledge that as humans it is only by owning our strength AND our weakness, that we can become whole.

No one is strong at all times.

We all have our weaknesses.

There may be academic weaknesses. For example, my brain does not appear to be wired to understand anything relating to the scientific. This is a natural weakness which I could work excessively hard to improve but for which I have naught desire to do so as it bores me rigid. I accept this reality about myself.

However, where things get more complicated is when we associate weakness with being emotional or simply feeling anything other than our culture’s constant push for us all to promote 24 hour positivity.

And therefore, I regularly hear people telling me that they can’t allow their own sadness/frustration/resentment/disappointment/anger to come forth because to do so would make them feel WEAK.

According to popular opinion, being happy and positive all the time is a sign of strength. A notion that can be perpetuated in the Church. Which always leaves me wondering why no one thought to tell Jesus this during his times of anger, sadness or of course, his most monumental moment upon that cross.

Consider too the moment where Jesus see’s Marys distress over the death of Lazarus. He wept. Now imagine one of our present day English Christians telling him in no uncertain terms to, ‘get a grip, pull your socks up, life goes on/children in Africa are starving (to the PC crew, I am not denying nor belittling this reality, simply highlighting that one form of suffering does not cancel out another), you just have to be strong, there is no point crying over spilt milk, MAN UP, grow a pair, don’t you know you are the son of God/God, that is in the past, don’t you know how this story turns out’, or any other manner of popular – DON’T SHOW EMOTION IN FRONT OF ME BECAUSE I CAN’T EVEN COPE WITH MY OWN, type of responses.

Imagine that!!

I know, at least I would like to think, that no one would say such things to God Almighty.

Why is it then, I wonder, that these are considered completely acceptable to be rolled out repeatedly to the people we claim to care about, during their most vulnerable moments when they are struggling with the most painful emotions?

We must examine this for we cannot support or hope to heal the parts of us that feel weak because they hurt in some way, by hiding them behind pretend strength. That is just a total waste of energy, at a time when energy may already be in short supply.

Admitting that we get hurt and subsequently feel upset confirms our own humanity. Without which, we can only hope to become a cold, hard, shell of a human/nation.

It is time to out this ridiculous notion of always needing to be strong. What each and every one of us really needs is people and places where we can be honest and vulnerable about the times when we feel weak because we are hurting. People who will not shut us down by re-enforcing the ‘you’ve just got to get on with it’ approach.

Sure, life does indeed go on with all its demands, expectations and responsibilities. But, this does not mean that it is not appropriate and at times mandatory to allow a little time out for the business of healing and resting.

Imagine telling someone with a broken leg to just get up and get on with it. Most people have a little more understanding and empathy than that. A broken leg needs some time for total rest before the leg has to be stretched with various exercises to develop and regain its strength and ability to function.

It really is no different with matters of the heart and soul.

There is a time to rest, a time to heal and a time to push ourselves to develop our genuine strength once more. All of which takes … time.

It is unfortunate that even here in 2018, the majority remain stuck in the delusion that a human that admits their humanity, vulnerability or struggle, is WEAK. And for some, a target for exploitation.

If only we would begin to realise that in admitting to our weaknesses as they arise, we can actually seek the selfcare and support that we need to heal and to become genuinely stronger again.

By denying our times of perceived weakness, we agree to feigning strength until something breaks.

That something being us.

We all have times where we feel weak and we need to be around others who will not judge or dismiss us but who will offer empathy and support. Without fearing that to do so is to encourage someone to ‘wallow’. Denying pain doesn’t make us strong or make the pain disappear. It just pushes it deeper and delays the process of healing as well as unnecessarily complicating the whole matter.

It tends to be those who recognise and acknowledge their own weaknesses that know how to be genuinely supportive of others. Whereas those still caught in the delusion that any confession of weakness makes them WEAK, will tend to shut down others in the same way they do to themselves. Sometimes people just don’t know how to respond in the face of pain, whether their own or others.

The bottom line is that the strongest thing any one of us can do, is to admit when we feel weak, respect this is an expression of our own humanity, respond to ourselves with compassion and ask carefully chosen others for support.

That is real strength.

The overall point is that it is not really about being strong or being weak but about being whole by being all that we are.