Time and Grace

“Some conflicts do not respond to addressing or processing. Only time and grace can heal them. Similarly, heroic journeys often begin with a situation that has no solution. Such difficult situations are meant to deflate the ego’s belief that it can solve all life’s problems by its own will power and without relying on grace. In all of us there is something that does and something that lets. To become fully human, we need to honor both of these.” How to Be an Adult in Relationships, David Richo

Let’s talk about this for a minute, because if you’re like me, you read this and immediately feel a little irritated with Mr. David Richo. But the man is dispensing some very helpful truth here, if I can get past my own ego long enough to receive it. Time and grace. The time and grace it takes my own delicate psyche and wounded neurology to heal from past hurts. The time and grace it takes the people I love to heal from their own, while I patiently abide and care for us the best I can. Some things are so painful, I just want them resolved right now. I don’t want this to hurt anymore and I don’t want to watch someone else hurt anymore either. It’s been addressed and processed to the greatest extent it can be processed, and now we wait.

Addressing a hurt means speaking it out loud. That’s its own challenge, saying what you mean and not saying it mean. Processing is bringing to consciousness the ego defenses I am engaging in during a conflict. Am I avoiding the conflict, because that’s what good girls do? Am I projecting my own immature behavior onto you and believing YOU are the problem, when really I’m struggling to contain myself? Am I afraid a friend or partner cannot handle my hurt and just too scared to admit something so vulnerable? Am I having to face that I am, in fact, selfish in this moment or childish or stubbornly refusing to see myself as a whole person who is both gifted and flawed, rather than a perfect person with no flaws?

And after the storm of addressing and processing, there is the quiet lull that is time and grace. There is the residual after conflicts with people we love. The hurtful things that were said. The true things that were said. The pain in you that I cannot fix. I can only trust in time and grace to carry you. The grief still sloshing around in me that is my own responsibility and in need of time and grace to heal me. David Richo says this is an inner power, letting. I believe, particularly in our western culture, that we celebrate our power of doing, charging forward, addressing, and resolving; and it is its own legitimate and necessary power. Where many of us struggle is in the letting. Letting a hard thing be a hard thing. I struggle with my own shadows and wounds. I am doing the best I can today. I will try to take responsibility for myself, care for me, give myself loving boundaries and respect yours, then I let myself be a woman who struggles. That is love. That is some real grown-up, full-of-grace love. You struggle too and I can’t do one damned thing about it but let you. I will not force you to rush. I will not manipulate you into changing right now, so I can feel better. I will not punish you for struggling or shame you for things you cannot help. I will manage myself, so you don’t have to. I will let you struggle today too.

There is balance in both the doing and the letting, and today I am grateful for the sweet gifts of time and grace that support me in getting there. May we be humble enough to acknowledge we need these gifts. May we receive them whole-heartedly. May we extend them to others in their struggles.

COVID Weariness

So here we are nearly a year since my last post about my nightly awakenings.  And what have I done this year?  Well, THE WORK.  The work has consisted of a lot of holding space for myself and others.  Keeping my heart open and grounded, so I can invoke the same posture in others who need their own ability to stay present with emotional pain.  I’ve listened, I’ve lectured, I’ve cried, and finally—I slept.  At last. 

It’s a good thing, because this year mental health workers have begun addressing a new phenomenon, one we don’t yet have a name for.  I’m not quite sure what to call it either, but it is indeed a thing and I’m calling it COVID Weariness, though that doesn’t truly capture the magnitude of it.  Based on personal and professional observations and experiences, here is a list of some of the possible symptoms one experiences when dealing with COVID Weariness:

1.       chronic sadness

2.       anger and irritability

3.      irrational thinking and difficulty with concentration

4.       symptoms similar to trauma reactions (i.e., hypervigilance, paranoia, avoidance of cues that elicit a triggered reaction)

5.       emotionally tender and reactive or alternately numbed and disconnected

6.       loss of pleasure in activities one once enjoyed

7.       loss of motivation, difficulty staying motivated to do daily tasks

8.       confusion and disorientation in day to day tasks and/or in planning ahead (as a result of living long-term with survival mentality)

9.       acting out and/or numbing behaviors (i.e., rage, overeating, drug or alcohol abuse, shopping, excessive use of activities that promote sense of feeling “checked out”)

10.   grief and difficulty naming it as grief

11.   difficulty connecting with other people when opportunities arise/feeling awkward and disjointed in one’s social skills

12.   persistent anxiety and difficulty identifying why

And this is really just a short list but a pretty concise one for what I am seeing in many people.  Every single day clients list these complaints to me and nearly always they express confusion as to why they feel this way.  In our 2020 vacuum, we are suffering and disconnected from one another while doing it.  This has denied us the emotional mirroring we need to contain our own pain.  We have no one validating for us that we have been and are being traumatized by the ongoing daily threat of infection, possible outside violence, and/or death.  We have no one helping us name the fact that we are carrying hypervigilance and grief in our bodies because of the ravages of a pandemic and violent political unrest we’ve witnessed for nearly a year.  We worry.  We are afraid.  We are sad and often hopeless.  We have lost some of our ability to make small talk.  I even noticed the other day that I no longer feel the automatic impulse to extend my hand to a stranger in greeting.  I’ve trained my mind to stop offering touch or to expect it from others.  This takes a toll on one’s psyche, emotional health, and physical health.  As human beings we are not wired neurologically to live under persistent threat with no room or time for resolution and to do it all while living in isolation.  We are a nation, a planet suffering under COVID Weariness. 

COVID Weariness is something you are experiencing as a result of the world you have lived in for the last year, even if you didn’t lose your job, even if you didn’t get sick, even if your friends and family have been taken care of and well, yes, even then.  You have sat in a world that faced death every day.  You changed your daily patterns and your family’s daily patterns.  You removed yourself from daily contact.  You watched suffering or at least knew it was happening and held this in the back of your mind.  All of us have been impacted and we cannot afford to minimize the emotional fallout from this pandemic.  We cannot remain in denial that what we feel is a result of what we’ve experienced.  We need one another’s mirroring eyes and we need community to heal. 

Last night our president addressed the nation and offered some hope of emerging from this pandemic, literally emerging from our homes and gathering, when and where it’s safe, with friends and family.  We need this to recover.  And even more than this, when we emerge it is essential that we acknowledge one another’s suffering.  We must bear witness to what has happened.  We have to name it.  We have to talk about it.  We have to validate for one another that this is unusual, traumatic, life-altering, and grievous.  We have to be compassionate and patient with one another’s emotional recovery.  When we fail to offer these important elements of healing to one another, we set ourselves up for more acting out.  In an effort to act out our pain and have it seen, we’ve indeed observed instances of violence, rage, and sorrow.  Our sorrows have gone unattended until they grew monstrous and primitive.  Our efforts to gain relief through raging have only deepened the grief trenches.  We have been leveled and deconstructed, but this also means we are poised for radical change. 

I write today to provide a mirror for what we are feeling and what I see each day.  It’s not a pretty thing to look at, but here it is, and we can handle it.  We must.  We can do the hard things.  We always have.  I’m grateful today that we seem to be turning a corner, and it is my hope that it is not only bodies that begin congregating again, but hearts.  Open, softened, and present hearts.

The Nightwork

I’ve taken to waking in the middle of the night, anywhere between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.  It started sporadically around September 2019 but became a nightly thing in January 2020.  This is especially significant for me, because I am and have always been a heavy sleeper.  I’ve never had sleep problems and have never functioned well on minimal sleep.  Sleep, in fact, is the one thing I’ve always been good at, anywhere, any time and, at least seven plus hours as needed.  So for me, of all people, to begin waking, wide-awake waking… I couldn’t make sense of it. 

And it continued nightly.  NIGHTLY I tell you, for months.  For the first week or so, I kept thinking it was stress-induced and that it would eventually pass.  I tried all the calming, meditation, relaxation, sleep hygiene strategies I teach my own clients, to no avail.  Finally about a month into the madness, I began to realize that despite only having 3- 5 hours of sleep per night, I was surprisingly alert and creative.  I began to realize that perhaps this was a new normal and something else was happening in me.  I felt more awake on the inside than I’d ever felt before.  This is when I began getting up when the 3 a.m. call came.  I got up and opened myself to whatever it was that wanted my attention.  This is when cool things began to happen.

Even during my resistance phase of the night-wakings, I woke regularly to God’s presence with me and comforting me.  During that time I was asking God for help in going back to sleep and settling my mind.  More nights than not, I didn’t get that particular prayer answered, but God remained compassionate to my resistance and near.  When I started waking and saying Lord, I’m up now.  What do you need me to do? I began feeling the weight of this world.  I saw friends and family in need.  I saw my own desperate and raw 3 a.m. pain (because it is indeed undressed at 3 a.m.).  Each night became sessions with God, sessions for crying, just being held, writing, praying, lying in contemplative silence, whatever impulse came.  Some nights I woke, lit a candle, and prayed.  Some nights I reached to the nightstand for a book and asked God to come back another night, let me sleep.  But more than anything, I can now say with such immense love, I have grown to look forward to nightly meetings with God.

I’ve stopped worrying about how I’m going to feel the next day, because most days I feel just fine.  I’ve developed trust that if God wakes me for work, God will sustain me through the next day.  That took over a month to learn that.  Once I stopped worrying about lack of sleep, I’ve been freed mentally to engage in a new way.  I’ve discovered a quiet palpability to the presence of God.  I’ve discovered what love literally feels like when it fills a room.  There’s an energy so sweet and humbling, overwhelming, satisfying.  There is nothing like it.  I’ve grown to trust what I hear in those hours, what I am told to do.  I don’t always adhere to it once the spell of Nightwork ends, but I’m trying; and finally now I am seeing how these last months of nightly wakings have prepared me for the days ahead.  I am a deeply sensitive person, one who perhaps could be easily overwhelmed by the anxieties of a world facing pandemic, but that is not the case.  At least not today.  I feel the weight of death, loneliness, and panic but I am not crushed by the weight.  Feeling it only gives me a read on how worthy the prayers of deliverance must be.  God lets me feel it so I’ll really understand it, not so it will consume me.  I trust.

So this morning, God allowed me to sleep in until 4 a.m., which I appreciate.  I woke to the holy cloud that fills my room at that hour.  I now smile at the sleeplessness and enter the power of the call.  This morning I felt the need to sage myself and the entire house.  I have felt that more acutely in recent weeks.  Yesterday was an emotionally difficult day and some of the remnants of it still clung to me.  I cut on a bedside lamp and first opened my bedroom window.  Immediately the sounds of morning birds chirped into the room, despite the fact it was still dark out.  The birds already knew what was coming on the horizon.  I opened multiple windows downstairs in the dark, tears already starting to fill my eyes—the weight of many needs coming in on me.  I let them come and continued my task.  I came back to my room and lit the white sage, let the smoke drift above me while listening to the birds.  I prayed through my own pain God, cleanse me for this work.  Remove the negativity of yesterday.  Wipe away any despair or fear that might try to cling. I can do whatever I need to do when you tell me to do it.  I need you.  Come be with me, surround me with your love, protect me in the days ahead.  Protect this home and everyone in it.  I can’t do a single thing without you, nothing, Lord, but I can do anything when you go before me.  The birds continued their conversations outside. The house began to fill with morning twilight and I started through every darkened room with the smoke, honoring it as a representation of God’s Spirit.  In every room I asked for cleansing, strength, and protection.  I carried the smoke upstairs and covered the children’s doors, calling in God’s presence around them.  I brought the sage back to my room downstairs and felt the need to write about this morning.

The work this morning doesn’t look much different than many other mornings.  I checked on a few friends and prayed for many.  I sat in God’s stillness and absorbed every ounce of supernatural love I could hold.  I cried.  I prayed some more.  And now I write.  World, we are in for a bumpy ride with COVID-19.  Many are dying and will die, and those who won’t are quarantined at home fighting their own battles with loneliness, depression, anxiety, and trauma.  In the coming months, many will emerge from their homes traumatized by the losses.  We separate ourselves to survive this deadly virus, and yet the separation from others takes its own toll on our mental and emotional selves.  Yesterday it took its toll on me. 

My spiritual work seems paltry when I consider what is happening around me.  I have a friend in Las Vegas, who I just chatted with this morning.  She was dragging herself home from work after covering the trauma of murder and suicide in her city, on top of the new normal of COVID-19.  Many of us know healthcare workers exposing themselves daily to this deadly virus with no fanfare or needed supplies.  Grocery store workers, health departments, banks, pastors, clinics, therapists, delivery drivers, sanitation workers, cleaning crews, so many facing risk.  Just this morning I read about a nursing home north of Nashville that had to take 19 of their elderly patients to the hospital to be treated for the virus.  There are people embattled, bearing a weight I’ll likely never know, pushing through in mighty ways.  But I write this to say— whatever you are doing, wherever you are doing it, know this— there is a woman across town who wakes nightly for you.  She lights a candle and begins the incantation.  She rises with you, because it’s all she can do and God insists she do it every night.  From this room in Tennessee I connect to the Higher Power for us all and I stand in the gap for you, begging mercy for you, pleading protection, and asking God to hold us all another day.  God, thank you for another day.  I’ll see you tomorrow morning.

The Way of Broken Things

Today is what is called Maundy Thursday in the Christian church. It is the day that Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. It was a moment for him to prepare them for the new way things would be after he was gone. I have sometimes wondered why Jesus taught so often in metaphor, and I believe one reason is because the naked truth can be too painful to receive. Some truths just hurt too much. They are not palatable. We would reject them. And this is certainly true in the metaphor of broken bread and shared wine.

Luke 22 tells us “When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table…. And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’” (v. 14, 19). We know that this symbolic gesture was a foreshadowing of the physical breaking Jesus would endure in the coming hours, but I believe Jesus was also preparing us for the breaking we all will endure. The breakings that are common to mankind, that are indicative of living, that are the mark of growing and changing. The painful breakings we endure where parts of us die, parts that need to die, they are allowed to die. The breaking that comes as friends and family leave this earth and leave us behind. What greater gesture than for Jesus to show us— you will be broken, I’ll go first.

Breaking, dying, then resurrecting. This is the way of becoming better and better versions of ourselves. This is the way of shedding ego, lies, old habits, dysfunction, relationships, and prejudices. These old patterns once held us. They got us through difficult situations and seasons of our lives and then they outlived their purposes. Old beliefs start to hold us back, hinder us from moving forward. They must be broken, and when they do it is terrifying. It’s terrifying to let go of an illusion that I once believed was actually keeping me safe in this world or even alive; yet Jesus prepared us that these breakings would come and offered this assurance— I give thanks for what this breaking is working in you. I share in the breaking with you. As you endure it, remember me.

But he didn’t stop there, he offered a solace. Matthew 26:27, 28 says “Then he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’” Again, this is a foreshadowing of the blood Jesus will physically shed in the coming hours. And as is his way, it is also a metaphor for the emergence of new things, resurrection. The only way we can allow breaking and dying is with the assurance that something new will come after this pain. Jesus didn’t just tell us to break and die. He also demonstrated what new life looks like. He offered the promise that he is the cocoon that holds us while we disintegrate. He is the grave that holds our many dying forms. I can’t let parts of me die and contain myself at the same time. God does the containing. This extension of the cup is a new promise of a new way— as you suffer, change, let go, and grow, there will now be the power of a grace to cover your messy processes. Breaking and dying is painful and ugly. We are not our best selves during these seasons, but they are the way of broken things. We have forgotten this in our culture that wants to be free of all pain and suffering at all times. We like all things neat, tidy, predictable, and orderly, but that’s just not how life always unfolds. Grace is the cup that allows for messy change inside of it. God is a God of allowing. Allowing breaking. Allowing dying. Allowing the emergence of something new.

So on this special day, whatever stage of the process you are in, may you take comfort in remembering Jesus’s gentle symbols for a not so gentle process. May you learn to allow all stages and seasons of life and of your own growth. May you learn to receive graciously then let go when it is time. May you learn to love with your whole heart then say good-bye when loved ones must go. May you learn to live with a heart that is ever breaking then ever being restored. In every death is a beginning. May you receive the broken bread and the cup. And may you emerge on the other side, something altogether new.

Worthiness: The Ultimate Gift

Like so many of us, I often get bogged down with the "Should've Disease."  I should've cooked a better dinner for my kids; I should've cleaned house instead of taking a nap; I should've worked on my writing project instead of lounging in front of the TV; I should've gone to the gym instead of sleeping in; and on and on and on.  The should haves will never end, because shame never ends.  Shame is a bottomless black hole of "not good enough."  No matter what I do, say or don't do or don't say, the shame in me will always find something wrong with it. Shame is a dark state of being, filled only with negativity, able only to see and feel the negative.  Shame is capable only of finding evidence within myself and this world that I am, in fact, a bad person and undeserving of any mercy.  If there is any glimmer of "not enough" anywhere within me or my environment, shame can sniff it out and use it as confirmation of my unworthiness.  Shame is a fear-fueled engine that never stops finding the bad, the wrong, the negative.  It does not stop itself and we cannot wait on it to stop itself.  It just doesn't work like that.  Shame is the absence of light, and the only way to escape from it is to shine some light on it.  

When we allow ourselves to get sucked into the Should've Disease, then we are launching head first into the shame pit.  And it's a long descent, one filled with sharp rocks, hard bumps, and complete loss of self.  It's difficult to escape it once the descent has begun.  Once I have spent too much time in the pit, I forget truths about myself and other people.  I forget that I am actually doing the best that I can on a daily basis.  I forget that I am a child of God and deserving of respect and kindness.  I forget that other people are also doing the best they can and deserving of my respect and kindness.  These are truths filled with light and thus, completely absent in the pit.  And these are dangerous truths to lose, because to believe I am actually NOT doing my best and NOT always deserving of compassion, means that I just hitched my worthiness onto my own ability to perform.  It's that kind of dark thought that can hasten a descent.  

So what do we do when we feel ourselves lost in this dark place?  The first thing is just to remind ourselves that we are stuck in a shame pit and riddled with the Should've Disease, which means that all the mean, nasty, and critical thoughts happening in our heads are purely a result of the disease.  These thoughts are, thus, a lie and to be ignored, banished to a far away place.  I refute them, and when I do, there is a flicker inside of me.  There is enough of a flicker for me to hitch myself onto the side of this slimy pit and begin the ascent back out of it.  

Just as there is momentum in the fall, there is momentum in the rising.  Just as shame pulls me downward with force, grace lifts me up with a greater force.  "Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." Romans 5:20  The law is a set of rules that define one's worthiness, and only by keeping the rules faithfully can one remain above reproach; but who can do that?  Who can ever really do that?  It's only by the fact that I am eternally incapable of ever doing enough, that I am then made deserving of grace.  My imperfection makes me qualified to receive grace, which is light.  Only light, and completely devoid of any darkness.  Ever.

So, what if, this Christmas, you could be given a lifetime supply of worthiness?  Well, merry Christmas to you.  It is given!  We need only to lean into the momentum of it and allow God to do the heavy lifting.  The gift of grace means I am forever free of both your judgment against me as well as self-judgment.  In 1st Corinthians, Paul said, "I care very little if I am judged by you or any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.  It is the Lord who judges me.  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.  He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts."  This is a man who unwrapped the gift of grace and found worthiness in knowing no one stands capable of judging but God alone.  May we all receive and hold year-round this precious gift!

Detachment: A Pathway to Peace

Detach. What a beautiful, yummy, and yet terrifying word. Webster's definition of detach is "To disconnect: separate: to extricate oneself or withdraw." Detachment is an action often prescribed to us in 12 step groups or by our therapists or friends. It means to emotionally let go of a situation or the outcome of a situation. Often we need to detach from people, because our remaining connected is poisoning us in some way. Always we detach as an act of love and ultimate respect toward ourselves. 

Detachment becomes necessary when my connection to a thing, a person, or a situation is threatening to my sanity, my peace, my integrity, my health, or body. There are people so incredibly toxic that to remain involved with them means constant chaos and pain. Sometimes we may need to detach from a person who we cannot fully exclude from our lives, because they are our child or our boss at work. This type of detachment is a mental and emotional releasing. It is arriving at an emotional place where our own stability no longer hinges on what the other person says or does. We come to a knowing within ourselves that regardless of how the other person behaves, we will not be moved. We will not be flustered, angered, or care more than they do about themselves or their personal affairs. We lovingly lay down another's personal responsibilities at their own feet and walk away. We separate our sacred self from the choices of another human being. We detach. 

There are situations in our lives that are troublesome and painful, situations which we cannot change despite our best efforts at trying. I am prone to worrying excessively, turning a problem over and over in my mind for a solution. Eventually the time comes when I have to be assertive with myself! I have to tell myself to detach from this situation. It is my responsibility, after I've done all I know to do, to go to my Higher Power and ask for help. It is good that I lean on my Higher Power in these situations that are larger than me. I pray the Serenity Prayer for courage, wisdom, and serenity and I detach. I extricate my mind from the worry place. I forbid myself from going there. I connect to the resources of my Higher Power and disconnect from believing a situation outside of me holds the power to care for me or keep me happy. Often I must detach several times in one day or perhaps several times in one hour. Nonetheless I detach as often as I need to until I feel my peace begin to return. 

Today I am so thankful for the skill of DETACHMENT, and today it feels good. There are times when detachment does not bring immediate relief, particularly the first few instances we detach from a painful person or situation. Laying down responsibility for things we cannot control can force us to take responsibility for ourselves in a way we have not been doing. We become more aware of our own feelings, all of them, the good and the bad. Although uncomfortable, detaching from others opens us to our own spiritual growth.  Sometimes there is intense grief after we detach from a situation. This is good and signifies moving toward ourselves and a fuller awareness of how we feel and what we need to do for ourselves. 

How detachment comes and how it happens is a mystery to me. We do it when we're ready. I love this passage from Melody Beattie's Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps: "Love and accept ourselves, as is, no matter what our present circumstances. The answer will come. The solution will come. But not from trying so hard. The answer will come from detachment" (pg. 26). We may do it when we're worn out from trying everything else. We may do it out of anger or frustration. We may do it with tears of grief or even tears of relief, but do it. Just do it. When you know you have lost your very self to someone else's mess or troubles beyond your control. Just detach.

How to Grieve

If only we as therapists could give a brilliant yet simple answer to this question.  How do you grieve?  Grief is a sort of hallmark for so many of the emotional struggles that might bring someone to therapy.  There is the grief of losing a loved one, a divorce, loss of a job, a disability, coping with emotionally absent parents, or even the loss of one's own fantasies about themselves.  

Grief is hard.  It is messy and painful.  There's no pretty way to go through a grief process.  You're going to be hostile, then desperate, then numb, then sad, and at times all of these things in a one-hour period.  Despite your best efforts and your own good intentions, grief will leave you too exhausted to do those dirty dishes or go to a family gathering; grief will leave you too bitter to spend time with your friends who don't understand; grief will make you snap at the people you love most.  At times, grief will turn you into someone you don't recognize and maybe don't even like.  This is how you'll know you're doing it right.

There are only a few things I can think of that I absolutely know are essential to moving through the grief process.  First, you must practice unconditional compassion and loving care toward yourself.  Grieving is exhausting and requires much of your emotional and mental energy.  You will need to be well-rested, well-fed, and surrounded by kind people where possible.  You will need to extend large measures of compassion and forgiveness toward yourself for who you are during this period or who you fail to be.  Grief behavior and feelings have no value label placed on them; they are neither "good" nor "bad."  They simply are.  Judging yourself for "crying too much" does nothing to support your grief process, rather it blocks your wise self from giving you exactly what you need in that moment.

This leads to the second important part of grieving, which is just show up.  You don't have to do anything to grieve.  Just show up with your sadness.  Invite it inside, sit with it, listen to it.  Give it what it needs.  That might be a nap or a hug from a friend.  Perhaps you just need to cry or you might even need some loving motivation from yourself to get up and clean house.  It doesn't matter what it is that your grief tells you, just show up and listen.  Even when what it says is hard.  Listen.  This process reminds me of labor and giving birth.  Labor is a painful process for a woman, but my body knows how to do it.  I can either try to relax, breath, and trust my body's work or I could panic and fight against it.  I did both when in labor with my children, so I get it!   Your mind, body, and soul know how to grieve.  Just because it's hurting doesn't mean something is wrong with you.  It's just part of the process.  Just as in physical labor, the grief process is producing a valuable work in you.  It requires just as much energy to fight the process, yet the pain of fighting grief produces nothing valuable but more pain.

And the most important thing I believe we can do during the grief process is to find those practices that connect us to a larger source.  The love we will need to give ourselves during this time is an unconditional love that can only be called supernatural.  From a source larger than us.  You will also need some supernatural wisdom, supernatural grace, and supernatural strength.   You're going to need to get connected to a supernatural source.  There as many practices to get you there as there are people in this world.  For me, I am connected when I am running on a sunny day, writing in my journal, in prayer, listening to music or singing.  It's in those moments I can draw from a Higher Power to get what I need for one more day of showing up.  Through engaging in these practices and mindfully participating in them, I am opening myself to the source of limitless love.  I will need all I can get to both endure each moment and hold hope there is relief on the other side.

Most of all, know that heavy, intense grieving does not last forever.  You may not come out of it the same person you were before, but you will come out of it.  Stay engaged in giving yourself what you need and know there is relief waiting down the line.  Returning from grief is a slow process like a sunrise.  You will notice it as a subtle change in your thinking, your energy, your focus.  The peace arrives slowly until one day you recognize, almost in surprise, that the heaviness you carried before no longer pulls you down.  Where once it was dark, there will be a beautiful glimmer of lightness.

"The past is grieved fully only when the present is healed too.  In fact, the energy that had been tied up in past hurts has finally become available to you for reinvestment in new ways of living."  How to Be an Adult-- David Richo

Anxiety Cramps

The theme for this month seems to be ANXIETY.  We are an anxious culture and no feeling is quite as unendurable as anxiety.  The landscape of it is different for everyone but always it is marked by the feeling of being on edge and out of control.  Sometimes the anxiety is colored with an intense fear of something intangible and dark; other times the anxiety is tinged with agitation and borderline hostility.  Anxiety is the result of our brain telling us to ramp things up, because danger is lurking near.

I believe that the ultimate hallmark of anxiety is when we leave this present moment and become stuck in some future event that we've imagined (i.e. the loss of a job or relationship, death, danger, deadlines) or stuck in an event from the past (i.e., shameful mistakes, loss, traumatic events).  Anxious people have great difficulty remaining in the now, and yet this is exactly where they need to be.  When we are anxious, we believe we are maintaining control of a scary situation by either imagining how we will control it in the future or how we could have in the past.  To sit in the present means to sit in the potential distress of the unknown.  For many people, worry and compulsive planning have been preferable to sitting in the distress of right now.

But what if you could find GOOD things in the right now?  When we learn to slow our minds and our bodies, we connect to ourselves in a meaningful way and to a power greater than ourselves.  Through this connection we are energized, motivated, and fueled with creativity. I tell many of my clients that their brains are in a perpetual "anxiety cramp."  Years of worrying and panic have set the brain's default response mode to ALARM.  Unfortunately, the brain begins to send these alarm signals in the absence of any true danger!  It takes time to massage the worry from our minds and learn that we have some control over the content of what is happening in our beautiful, chaotic head.

God calls himself The Great I Am.  In the now.  The present.  This moment.  If we want to connect with the ultimate source, we have to stay in the right now.  God meets us there with peace, comfort, and sometimes answers.  For many people, learning to still their minds is difficult, but I encourage you-- it's not impossible.  By daily practicing new skills, you can change your brain, and you set your new default to this wonderful setting called peace.