Dr. Joe Dispenza says when we hang on to emotions, when we can't let them go, we become addicted to them. And then, in that addiction, we start using the situations in our life as reasons to get a dose of that emotion we can't let go of.
We'll keep calling on that emotion until what we're addicted to is a life we don't like living. I've come to know that most of my life the emotion I couldn't let go of was resentment. There were others, I know, but they were all children of resentment. I've come to own that I spent a lot of my life resenting people and situations because I looked for excuses to experience a shot of resentment, not because the people or situations were resentful. I've traced the roots of that resentment. The events and circumstances aren't important. What's important is recognizing how much of my life I've spent NOT reliving events and circumstances but craving the emotion that came out of them. Resentment has been an emotion I've felt comfortable in, simply because it was the emotion I was most familiar with. When you've grown up as someone not great with emotions, you'll cling to the ones you know best. The ones that are familiar. Until, that is, we can no longer escape the reality we are living a life we don't like living. I spent decades resenting life before I woke up one day feeling like, what the heck, life has started resenting me back. Some people think it should be easy to wake up and start living a life you like living. One that has started resenting you back. Stop doing this and start doing that and, voila, you have a life you like living. For some of us it's not quite that simple, those of us who've been addicted to some toxic emotions. Because we've destroyed some things along the way and we've had to leave some things behind along the way and we're too utterly exhausted to keep fighting through our addiction to resentment to take on life yet another day. You can sleep off the hangover from the alcohol you use to drown your toxic emotions, the hangover from toxic emotions themselves is a much bigger monster. Trading in resentment for peace is not a simple transition. Some addictions are not even trades. Recently I felt a dose of resentment come upon me. It couldn't be helped. As Dispenza says, we can't NOT react to something, but we CAN control how long we react. I'm not holding onto this reaction, I thought. I went for a walk. I turned on the playlist I've saved to my phone, the one that sounds like peace when I play it, created specifically for this moment. And many times in the steps of that walk I reminded myself, I have traded in resentment for peace. You would think it would be easy to hold on to peace once you've experienced it. But it's not. It takes work. New and healthier addictions take time. The old emotions want to show up uninvited, the new emotions need quite a few invitations before they feel at home within us. Before they feel familiar. I am thankful for just how familiar peace feels these days. I am thankful for how out of place resentment feels, like an intruder I can't wait to evict. Do you have emotions that need evicted? It starts with knowing where your emotions are coming from. It starts with identifying if your emotions are connected to events of the here and now or being used in the here and now to call upon emotions you've become addicted to. Maybe it's time to hang on to some new emotions. Some more peaceful ones. The starting place: let go of some old ones.
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In the book of Matthew, as part of his sermon on the mount, the bible tells us that Jesus once said, "blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
If you dig into that word 'blessed' - you will find it comes from the Greek word "makarios" - which can mean happy. So I re-read those words this morning, I said them out loud, happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. I think of Jesus as the great dichotomist. The man of contrasts that from a worldly perspective often make little sense. They are indeed often quite counter-cultural. The first shall be last. Lose your life to find it. Strength in weakness. Gaining by giving. And now this, this whole happy are the mourners. But you know what, I have come to understand this one, Jesus. Deeply. When Jesus talks about mourning in this sermon, it's easy for us to immediately consider the mourning that comes with losing a loved one. Culturally, that's how we most often think of mourning. But I think Jesus is talking about a much broader sense of emotional pain. Certainly the deep sense of sorrow associated with losing a loved one is included here, but there's also profound regret and sorrow over sin and the incessant wrestling with unresolved hardships and traumas. And more. I think Jesus recognizes here just how prone we are to keeping our emotional challenges to ourselves, to bury them deep within us, so he is publicly calling us to an honest and authentic expression of our grief. Calling us to acknowledge it and embrace it with others. Calling us to mourn. I think he's telling us that happiness is found not in the emotion of mourning, but in the release that comes after the mourning. The mourning that is ideally greeted with comfort from those around us. I happen to think that because that has been my experience. I have experienced the deepest mourning of my life the last 8 years yet have pushed ever closer to happiness. A push fueled by acknowledging and embracing my struggles, no longer burying them. A push fueled by vulnerability. In the vulnerability, I have found comfort in the form of others. A comfort that has ultimately pointed me closer to a preacher delivering a sermon on a mount. A comfort that has felt more like happiness than I've ever felt. So many signs point to an unhappy world. Escalating drug overdoses and suicides no small part of those signs. Many might see those signs and see a world in mourning. I personally don't believe that. I believe we have a world longing to mourn but increasingly, in our growing disconnection, we struggle to find our people to mourn with. Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Unless, that is, they can't find the comforters. Which side of the dichotomy was Jesus calling us to here? Was he calling us to be happy, or to be comforters. Or, was he suggesting there's no dichotomy there at all? Maybe he was suggesting they are one in the same. Three years ago today, I took an unexpected hike up to McAfee Knob. I thought I was doing it to keep my friend Celia company on her quest to run the length of the Appalachian Trail with our mutual friend Meg. Looking back on that hike, though, three years later, I know no one received more help than me that day.
I was very resistant to the hike. But Celia has the gift of persistence. Both in her own life and willing it into the lives of the people around her. So up we went. I was several months removed from a broken marriage. I remember hearing in those days, over and over, take time to heal. And I remember thinking in those days, over and over, who are you to offer your advice on my healing? Celia never mentioned healing that day. I appreciate that about her. I appreciate that her way of encouraging me to take time to heal was to encourage me to stand on the edge of the world and walk away from it with my own picture of healing. Pictures of my own transformation. I look back on that day, and on the many days that have come and gone since, and I realize that little healing comes from advice. Little healing comes from reading books or consuming inspirational reels. Little healing comes from thinking about the act of healing at all. Healing comes from going forward and up. It comes from taking action, from stepping out of the familiar and into the unknown. It’s in the moments where we push ourselves, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. Healing happens when we engage with the world, when we help others, and in doing so, inadvertently help ourselves. Sometimes healing is something we stumble upon when healing is the furthest thing from our mind. That day on McAfee Knob, I wasn’t seeking healing. I was simply moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, and focusing on the path ahead. It was in that forward motion, in that upward climb, that healing found me. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best way to heal is to keep moving, to keep climbing, and to trust that the act of going forward and up will lead us to where we need to be. It's a reminder to keep people in your life who don't implore you to heal, but invite you to hike. There's a big difference between people who tell you where you need to go and people who walk beside you to places where you can figure that out on your own. And it's a reminder that a hike can mean one thing one day and come alive with all new meaning three years later. Life is so very cool that way. So very healing. A couple of months ago, when I moved into a new apartment, the gas company came to turn the gas on. Yet, even after it was turned on, I had no hot water. Turns out I had to wait for maintenance to come and unlock the closet that housed my hot water heater and then light the pilot light on that heater.
I think of people that way sometimes. They have life and blood flowing through them, yet, their light is sitting dimmed behind a locked door. A light that longs to shine but has no idea how to unlock that door. I interact with a lot of people who have hidden lights. They have experienced things along the way that have left them feeling like they no longer have light or that for some reason their light no longer has a place to shine in the world. Jordan Peterson says, "if you love someone, you see their hidden soul, you get a glimpse of the light they could reveal to the world if they revealed it. To act in love is to encourage that light to come forward and discourage anything that stands in its way." I have been through periods in my life when I felt my light disappear. I have been in relationships where both parties gave up on seeking and revealing glimpses of light in one another. Lights go out in people and relationships not because there is no longer light, but because people quit looking for it in one another. I suppose that's one reason I'm passionate about getting glimpses of the light people could reveal to the world. I know from personal experience that what looks like darkness on the outside is not always, maybe not ever, the absence of light on the inside. I'm not sure I could ever help someone find a light that isn't there, but I do know how to unlock closets and light pilot lights. Mainly because I've been blessed to experience people looking for and finding and revealing the light in me. If you want to act out love in a powerful way today, maybe even in spaces where you've come to doubt love any longer exists, get a glimpse of a light in someone who believes they no longer have light. Reveal it to them, and encourage them to reveal it to the world. The world needs more light, but light starts with unlocking some closets. Closets we all have keys to. The key is love. Have you ever watched a toddler learn to walk? There's almost always an outstretched hand on the other side of the room he stumbles toward.
Such little hesitation in a child's first steps. Bravery. She sees who she's going toward. She knows the safety and security and encouragement to be found there. And so she goes. Determined. So many of us are still learning to walk: Walk into that relationship. Walk into that job opportunity. Walk into that conversation that needs to be had. Walk OUT of the habits or situations that are holding us back. But unlike the toddler, we hesitate. No longer brave. Maybe we no longer see the outreached hand on the other side of the room? Maybe we don't feel the safety and security and encouragement that's waiting for us there? Maybe we don't here the voice: "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." A child longs to get where a child longs to be. So the child takes a step. Where do you long to be that you're not getting to? What steps are you hesitating to take? If you are waiting to see the hand stretched out to your inner-toddler, that hand is not coming. But nonetheless, a hand is stretched out. A hand begging you to discover why you learned to walk in the first place: to forever know the power of a step. Have we forgotten that power? If so, there's no better day than today to remember it. Go ahead and take a step where you are today and discover what God will do over there. Because God is indeed over there. I see his hand. It is stretching out. Every moment, life happens.
Sometimes it happens small and simple. Breakfast maybe. Other times it might happen much bigger. Divorce for example. Either way, some event is always happening in our lives. It happens, and then it is gone. Some events feel like they tag along with us long after the event is over. But they don't. Events in our lives are like those messages that disappear in social media apps once they've been opened and read. All that remains is the story we tell ourselves about what we just read. Last night, I was sharing some pictures with the boys that popped up as Facebook memories from ten years ago. Pictures of a family vacation to the Grand Tetons. I remember the story I told myself about those pictures when they were taken. Stories of gratitude. Stories of what it meant to be a dad who could gift his boys with a sense of awe. Stories of adventure. I've experienced the event of divorce since the event of that trip. And in showing the boys those pictures last night, it felt like that divorce event uninvitedly jumped up into my lap like a wet dog running in from the rain, totally derailing the moment. The divorce event showing up to derail the meaning of that Grand Teton event a decade ago. How can something that happened years later have such an impact on something that happened so many years before? The answer is, it doesn't. Not at all. The impact comes from the story we tell ourselves about that event. The story we tell ourselves about one event arriving to somehow destroy another. These events didn't even know each other, yet I tell myself a story that connects them? Ian looked at the picture of him holding the river otter. Oh, how that little boy insisted he would see a river otter on that trip. To satisfy that craving, because we couldn't find the real deal, we ended up buying him a stuffed version of the creature. Ian said, "I remember wanting that otter so bad, then I immediately left it somewhere and mom had to go hunt it down." He said this laughing as he disappeared into the bathroom. I was telling myself a story about a trip ruined. Ian was telling himself a story about a trip memory that made him laugh a decade later. Same event, different stories. I heard a pastor recently say that 'restoring' our lives is about 're-storying' our lives. There's so much truth in that. Because once an event is over, the good and the bad and the ugly, the event is over. Gone. The only thing left is the story we tell ourselves about that event. And in that, there is a lot of power. Last night I had the power of choice. Tell myself a story that a divorce that happened years after my kid's river otter moment somehow damaged that river otter moment, or, tell myself the story about a kid running off to the bathroom laughing about that river otter he still has stashed away somewhere. I chose the latter. I chose the latter because so much of my life is about restoration these days. And all restoration starts with re-storying. What stories are you telling yourself today? What stories are you telling yourself today that you need to re-story? We are all great story tellers; but I think we could all get a little better at re-storying. Take it from this story teller, it's not easy, but it's absolutely possible. Absolutely possible - and healing. Meredith Ayala says, "you don't have to fit in when you belong."
When it comes to life, especially young lives, the difference between one trying to fit in and one knowing they belong can be the difference between life and death. There's a rapidly moving convergence in the lives of young people: a greater sense of alienation and a growing rate of incidences of self-harm, suicidal ideations and completed suicides. Why is it so damaging for one to feel like they don't belong? People who feel like they belong have greater access to emotional support from friends and mentors and family members. At a time when our young people are experiencing more stress than ever, it's the emotional support they get from the people around them that serves as a key to their resilience. But if they are fighting to fit in, not only are they denied access to that support, fighting to fit in can become the greatest and most lethal stressor of all. I am not a big fan of the term self-esteem. Self-esteem often relies on me feeling good about all the characteristics of me the human. I'm a much bigger fan of the idea of self-worth, which really suggests that I have worth simply because I am human. My value isn't found in what makes up my being, but quite simply in the truth that I AM a being. More and more young people don't feel a sense of self-worth. Often because they are being challenged to change things about themselves that on the outside would make them seemingly more worthy, which only tends to hide them from the truth that their mere being makes them worthy. God created us all worthy. Human interactions with one another only praise God for that or else work implicitly or explicitly to deny that truth of God's creation. Why is any of that important in this conversation? When young people feel accepted and valued by others, their worth is honored. Which leads to a strong sense of self-worth. And when young people know they are valued simply for being, their confidence in their ability to overcome challenges grows. Exponentially. Social media takes a lot of heat in this particular discussion. And I will never argue that social media is a friend to the health and wellness of our kids. That's a much longer discussion for another day. But I will say this. No young person - or person in general, really - is going to turn to a screen to feel their worth if they are overwhelmed by acceptance and a celebration of worth from the real life humans around them. Social media is a symptom not a cause. So what do we do? Start more conversations with kids by asking them who they are and not telling them who they should or could be. Promote schools, workplaces and communities with foundations built on developing the celebration of worth and acceptance and not developing economic prosperity. If you see a kid spending too much time in a screen, consider the possibility it's not a screen time issue but rather a case that no one has asked that kid to go fishing or hiking or star gazing or to the library. After food and water, there is nothing more critical to human survival than a human's sense of belonging. For as far back as we can trace, if one hasn't belonged to a group, they have not survived. For the longest time that was because of so many external threats; we needed each other to fight off the dangers or to hunt down our nourishment. But today many of those external threats are no longer threats. Yet the threats are not gone, they are simply more internal. The internal battle to fit. To belong. Maybe it's a predator not nearly as visible as the predators faced by ancient tribes, but it's a predator still the same. The good news is, this is a predator we all have it within us to defeat. Defeat forevermore. It starts with recognizing we all have worth simply because we are living. A worth that was declared worth celebrating at the moment of our creation. The question is, have we decided that people need to live a certain way to maintain their worth? In many cases the answer has become yes. And in many of those cases people are deciding life isn't worth living. We have the power to decide this isn't acceptable; it starts with making all people feel more acceptable. You need to fit in, or I accept you. The choice is ours. Understanding history can be helpful. Helpful, that is, until history is the place we decide to live.
At a resilience conference this week, a speaker challenged us to stop seeing history as something that happened to us and instead start seeing history as something we write. Then yesterday, I listened to a pastor recount the genealogy of Jesus. If you go to the first chapter of Matthew and take a scan of Jesus' family tree, you'll find thieves and liars and adulterers and prostitutes and all kinds of broken hanging from His tree. And yet, Jesus never once tried to re-write the history of that tree; Jesus was all about writing a history for the you and me who were generations away from joining that tree. None of this is to say we can or should look at history and say no big deal. But the reality is, the bigger the deal our history is, the more necessary it often is to become someone who will get focused on writing history and not living in it. I think of people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela and Edith Eger. People who had histories that had to make them feel like writing history seems inconceivable, and yet they took upon themselves the mission of writing history anyway. And there's you and me, who maybe we aren't trapped in histories as challenging as racism and holocaust, but does it matter what history we're trapped in if that history has convinced us we can't write a new history for our kids, and for their kids, and for kids 14 generations from now? I've thought about resilience this week within a question, a personal challenge of sorts, am I writing history or living in it? Over the last several years, making meaning of my history has become important to me. Helpful and healing. In the making of that meaning, I've come to understand just how many years I spent living in history. Or maybe more true, hiding in it and from it. Someday, my boys will look back at their history. And when they do, oh, I know they'll surely find plenty of the sins of Abraham and David and Rahab and Jacob and Solomon. But I hope they'll also see a little Jesus. I hope they'll see the man, who, in spite of living a large chunk of his life stuck in history, eventually turned into a man committed to writing history. Largely inspired by and motivated by his desire for his sons to become history writers long before he did. What about you? Are you living in history or writing it? The beautiful thing about that question is it's never too late to change the answer. For if I've learned anything in this life, it's that it's never too late to start writing. Several weeks ago, I received an email notifying me that I'd been chosen by a committee to receive an award at an upcoming conference. The award would recognize me for being a community resilience champion.
To be honest, after reading the email, I felt uneasy. I wrestled with that feeling for quite some time. At the heart of the wrestling I suppose was recognizing that I'd spent a lot of time the last few years promoting resilience as a 'we' thing - we are in this together - and not a measure of one's individual strength or grit or determination. Yet, there I would be, at a resilience conference, center stage, an individual, holding an award. Maybe it felt like the award would go totally against the grain of what I believe about resilience? I honestly felt that way all the way up to listening to yesterday morning's keynote speaker, Father Paul Abernathy. In his talk, Father Abernathy said community resilience often starts with identifying people in communities who have two characteristics of resilience. One, they are master meaning makers of their own story. And two, they have transcended their stories to a place of finding a higher purpose for those stories. Eight years ago, I sat in a presentation at a conference where I first heard with any meaningful insight a conversation about trauma and resilience. I say often my life changed in that presentation. And I have also said I learn a little bit more each day about the depth and the magnitude of that change. Maybe yesterday was the biggest day of learning in that whole learning journey. Yesterday, I realized I answered a call eight years ago. I answered a call to start making meaning of what had been (and continues to be) a broken life. Many days a life that can look and feel broken beyond repair. I didn't know at the time I was receiving a call, or answering one, but day by day along the way of this journey, God has offered quiet signs that He and I are on a resilience journey together. We. God works that way. He often whispers signs, but there are times, if our senses are wide open, God will deliver his signs with booming precision. When I was called to the stage yesterday, I felt one of those booms. And what I heard God say was thank you. Oh, how we serve a grateful God. He said thank you for realizing there is as much meaning in broken stories as their is in mended stories. Maybe more. He said thank you for discovering that broken may feel lost on earth, but in heaven broken often looks like the path to forever found. He said thank you for discovering that the greatest value in mastering the meaning of your own broken story is coming to feel the pain others are suffering through in their own broken stories. And in that feeling, sensing the call to become a meaning maker in their lives. And then I said thank you. Thank you for making meaning in my life God where meaning would have never been found. Not ever. Thank you for all of the beautiful people you've brought into my life who've in many ways pointed me to and shared in and become that meaning. Thank you God that although you are often a whisper, you can with great precision show up as a boom. Right when we need to hear and feel it. If you are feeling broken in any way today, let me assure you there is great meaning in that brokenness. A meaning that goes well beyond the often dire stories you tell yourself about that brokenness. Well beyond the stories others might tell you about it. Walk to the edge of the wilderness. And keep walking there. Day after day. And I promise you, one day you will discover a path. Travel that path often enough and you'll eventually hear a boom. Chances are, it will sound like thank you. Thank you. I was watching golf's US Open Sunday. It looked like Rory Mcllroy was about to break his decade long streak of not winning a major tournament. Until he missed a short putt that he'd made 496 consecutive times.
On the biggest stage, in your biggest moment, you somehow can't do something you've done nearly 500 consecutive times? Viewers could see dejection overcome him. I could see it. And feel it. It was gut wrenching, especially as he indeed went on to lose the tournament. Mcllroy called it the hardest moment of his 17-year golf career. But he said he would rise again. I'm attending and presenting at the Pathways to Resilience conference the next two days in Roanoke. Resilience is maybe my favorite topic. Because in the end, if I have a say of what goes on my tombstone, I wouldn't mind it saying, "he rose again." Not in a Jesus rose from the dead sort of way, but in an every time he found himself down in life he found a way to rise sort of way. Every time he missed the putt everyone thought he was supposed to make, he rose again. Every time he missed the putt HE thought he was supposed to make, he rose again. I heard a pastor use the phrase "rebellious resilience" this weekend. She described it as being in moments when we are so hurt or so down on ourselves or so lost in our ways that we find ourselves believing I can't do this, yet somehow turn rebellious enough to find a way to do it anyways. So maybe we just shorten my tombstone message to rebel? I love the work I get to do, encouraging the rebellion in others. I love being a part of conferences that encourage the rebellion in others. Because this day really comes down to that for all of us. We are all faced with challenges, many of them much more significant than a golf tournament. Yet we are all faced with the same question in the middle of them. Can I rise again? Can I once again find a way to be a rebel? I believe you can. I believe in the rebel in you. I believe that the more we lift each other up, the more we can bring out the rebel in everyone. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
November 2024
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |