COUNTERINTUITIVE

When we get anxious, we often find our body wanting to speed up and get more done. Anxiety functions as energy to try to accomplish something that will reduces the anxiety.  

This is especially true when we have lost something or someone significant. The absence of a center-piece of our lives makes us feel anxious. So, it seems normal to get busy and try to replace what is gone with something else that will function as a stabilizing presence for us. 

But, there is a problem with this strategy. Anxious energy is adrenalin that helps us get through a crisis, but it does not function for long term solutions for our emptiness. We frequently run out of energy before we have been able to discover another orienting center for our lives. When that happens, we become exhausted, maybe even depressed. 

So, I suggest something that is counterintuitive.  I suggest that when you are in the process of grieving loss (that is, learning to live without someone or something important) don’t hurry-up but slow-down.  When you are finding your way forward one step at a time, you have to think about your decisions more than you do when life is even and stable. The emotional stress of walking carefully, evaluating each move, determining if the direction forward is what you really want to do—these all take energy.   

Because you are using more energy to live each day, it is critical to take time to rest.  When you pace yourself, when you stop and give your body and mind a respite, they will serve you better for longer.  And working your way through a loss to new life takes longer than many other types of work. 

So, be gentle with your self and  give yourself energy renewal time. It will make a big difference.

BREATHING SPACE

In the novel, Middlesex by  Jeffrey Eugenides , a young woman has run away from home. She reports that her parents wait by the phone to get word of her, but they are afraid that they might hear that she has died. They are ambivalent about picking up the phone because "ignorance seemed preferable to grief."

There are times in our lives that knowing the truth about an ending is difficult to hear. We need some protection from the truth because once we know that loss is real, we have to grieve.  And grieving is hard.  It takes lots of work and exhausts us.  Learning to live without someone or something that has been important to our self-understanding requires attention and internal negotiation to determine how to live a new way.

Sanctuary is important. Each of us has to deal with the truth in our own time and our own way.  Denial may not be a healthy way to deal with endings, but it can be a safe place to retreat to at times. To consider all the implications of a significant loss takes time and strength. We need spaces in our lives when we can breath and rest.  The unrelenting truth of loss can wear us down unless we have space where we can rest and renew our strength.

If you know someone who struggles to deal with the end of the way the world was, be graceful with them. Know that sometimes they need to just be held and not wrestle with reality all the time. Be a sanctuary for them and allow your presence to be a sabbath space.  They will return to the struggle with truth when they have the strength.

DISAPPOINTMENT

I read this quote recently on Facebook: "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be."  I agree.  One way not to be disappointed is to not have any image of the way things are supposed to be.

But, I wonder how much we miss if we give up our imagination about what we would like life to be. Desire is vital to life. It is what makes the difference between existing and living. Desire is the driving force for activity.  The desire for the well-being of our family drives us to get to work and earn money. The desire for a better world drives us to work for laws that make a more just world.  The desire to live well in our family motivates us to be graceful and forgiving.  Desire is what gives shape and form to our daily decisions.

So, if we are to be alive, and if we are to desire life to be a certain way, what do we do when it doesn't turn out the way it's "supposed to be"?  How do we live with being disappointed when people don't do what we think they should do?  

One way to look at disappointment is as a loss.  When things don't work out as we want, we lose something. We lose confidence in our ability to make things happen the way we want.  (Maybe that is something like the loss of the illusion that we are God.) We may lose our belief that everyone else sees the world the way we do. We lose the illusion that others desire life just as we do.

And with any loss, we have to grieve it.  Grieving loss is at it's core an act of forgiveness.  One person has said that forgiving is forgrieving.  Our inability to forgive the world for disappointing us will destine us to live in the prison of past pain.  Forgiving others for disappointing us frees us to live a new way, maybe with the grace to accept that which we can't change.  It makes it possible to move forward in a world that isn't the way we think the "world is supposed to be."

What do you have to grieve during this holiday season?  Will you forgive those who disappoint you and open to the surprises of a world that is new and filled with different possibilities?