Contempt: The Pandemic Before the Pandemic.

I was just off the heels of a breakup when Donald Trump went and got himself elected. Being that I had made a deliberate decision not to process my feelings regarding the loss of what I thought would be marriage, I channeled all the negative emotions I could conjure up directly into politics.

And it felt great, at first.

I listened to NPR on the way to work, during my lunch break, and on the way home. I scanned articles from the New York Times, CNN, and The Atlantic throughout the day, anytime the coast was clear. I was finally waking up to the political ongoings I should have educated myself on years prior—but I was doing so with an increasingly unhealthy alignment to one perspective, and a growing animosity for anything—or anyone—that opposed it.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love NPR. But I had no idea at the time that I was meticulously nurturing a garden of contempt in my heart that would soon begin to poison my own soul.

My health started to suffer in a matter of months. This led to 2 years of doctor visits of all kinds. No one could pinpoint what exactly was going on. Some guessed stress, others blamed hormones, others said gluten. I can now say with certainty that the source behind my sickness was contempt.

“Negative words produce verbal toxins that destroy the soul. In the wake of negative, critical words a person’s confidence is destroyed and God’s possibilities are crushed. Yes, spoken words have the power of life and death.”

— Tim Cameron, The Forty-Day Word Fast

According to Psychotherapist John Gottman, contempt is one of the most destructive emotions we experience. He states, “It conveys, ‘I’m better than you. I don’t respect you.’” He goes on, “The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless…contempt erodes the bond that holds [people] securely together. It’s impossible to build a connection [with others] when your relationship is deprived of respect.”

Gottman has worked with thousands of married couples to identify destructive attitudes that lead to divorce—contempt being the most common one. And I believe his discovery can also be applied to society at large—as we look at the destruction we see all throughout our nation, I think we might find that contempt is at the heart of much of it.

The process of dehumanization begins when we perceive ourselves to be above or better than an individual or group of people. Our unwillingness to listen to, learn from, or see any value in an individual causes us to view them as less human, and thus, less worthy of basic human rights, and ultimately, even of life.

Scripture puts it quite frankly: whoever hates his brother is a murderer (1 John 3:15). When we harbor contempt, we strip the object of our contempt of their humanity, and therefore any actions coming forth from this state are destructive, violent, and/or meant to harm.

Simply put, contempt destroys—both outwardly and inwardly. It leads to a steep decline in our mental, physical, and spiritual health, and it stands starkly opposed to the otherwise healthy functioning of our souls. It stifles gratitude, joy, peace, and self-control. It opens the door wide for pride to set in, leading to isolation, anxiety, and depression.

Furthermore, contempt breeds contempt. We have seen this destructive attitude modeled by our nation’s leader almost daily over the last four years. It has saturated our news and media outlets, social platforms, daily conversations, and even our thoughts. It has become the new normal. The level of contempt in our country has escalated unbridled like the wildfires that have ravaged some of the most beautiful parts of our nation.

So how do you know if you’re harboring contempt?

Here are a few things that have tipped me off to my own.

1. Intolerance. If you find yourself unable to seek understanding of another person’s perspective. When you begin to notice you have an intolerance of any opposing view, this is an indication of contempt.

2. Broken relationships. If you have burned bridges due to political disagreements, which would have been otherwise healthy relationships, this could be a sign that contempt was the driving force.

3. Anxiety & Depression. Given the nature of 2020, much of the world has experienced at least some amount of decline in mental health. However, I can’t help but wonder how much of this was aided by the contempt brooding in our hearts.

4. Physical sickness. I know. This is a ridiculous thing to suggest during a global pandemic. But harboring toxic emotions does take a physical toll on our bodies. We may feel tired continually, have more headaches, catch colds more easily, etc. Our bodies were not designed to uphold the weight of contempt.

5. Lack of spiritual growth. A spirit of contempt stands starkly opposed to the spirit of God. While one leads to death, the other leads to life. We can choose to attune our hearts and minds to the spirit that gives life, or we can snuff it out with one that leads to destruction. But we certainly cannot choose both.

What we can do about it?

According to Gottman, the antidote to contempt is “fondness and admiration.” In other words, respect. If we want to begin the work of rebuilding our nation, we have to start with rebuilding our respect for other human beings—even those with strongly opposing views.

But please hear me: this doesn’t mean we need to agree with or condone toxic ideology, or that we should become more tolerant of oppression, or become quietly complicit with the evil systems we see. It simply means we should direct our contempt toward the toxic ideology itself, rather than the humans through whom it’s playing out.

Evil ideology is our truest enemy, but it will continue to gain power when we direct our contempt toward the wrong target. When we hate others because of their ideology, it makes us vulnerable to developing an equally toxic ideology.

So back to what I was saying. What can we do about it? We can pray. We can channel our feelings of contempt right into prayer. These are powerful emotions and they need a trustworthy and risk-free outlet. And maybe over time, these prayers can slowly turn into asking for the good of those we feel contempt toward—even if it’s just that their eyes may be opened to the truth. This allows us to begin to acknowledge the valuable human souls beneath the ideology we so despise.

We can also be intentional about slowly increasing our exposure to individuals we disagree with. We can find people with whom we have other things in common and focus on that instead. Over time, we will witness their positive qualities and our fondness and admiration will grow, so long as we allow it.

If we want our nation to survive this deadly wave of contempt, we have to see beyond political alignments to the human souls beneath. We have to remember that it's not a person or group that is our greatest enemy, but the evil ideologies that have crept into our hearts and minds.

And perhaps most importantly, we have to remember that we ourselves are part of the problem… and we will always have more to learn.

We are not better than someone else because we see things differently. We have had experiences that have opened our eyes in a different way, and those we have had only by the grace of God.

We must, above all else, remember that when we hate another human for their evil actions or beliefs, we open our hearts to an equal measure of evil.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best and far more concisely:

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

What Ebenezer Scrooge Can Teach Us About Anxiety

From my very earliest Christmas memories, the annual viewing of A Muppet Christmas Carol has been a staple of of my holiday traditions. But watching it this year alongside my husband and step-nuggets, it struck me in a new way.

Because things hit different in 2020. It’s been quite a year for all of us—and I think even if you aren’t a person whose dealt with anxiety in the past, this year, you’ve probably had at least a small taste of what it’s like. And to those of you who, like myself, already struggled with it to begin with—well, I’m holding up the Hunger Games salute.

But the good news is there is a gold lining to this: anxiety is more than aimless discomfort to be stifled, it comes with a message. One that, if addressed, can lead us to healing.

The question is, though, will we bury the anxiety we feel or will we allow it to lead us to greater freedom?

I truly believe Charles Dickens was channeling a healing truth for anxious hearts when he wrote A Christmas Carol—one that we need to hear now perhaps more than ever.

The Lesson of Christmas Past

Anxiety feels like it has to do with the present, sometimes overwhelmingly, but it derives it’s power from the past. Whatever the anxious thoughts are that we face today, they are springing up from something we’ve already faced in the past. The key to stoping the cycle is uncovering the event(s) that continue to fuel these fears.

When we experience trauma (a sense of helplessness), and we don’t have the resources to cope in a healthy way, it can become deeply rooted as a memory we bury rather than move through. And thus, this trauma (or memory of helplessness) remains present with us continually. This is the nature of anxiety—it’s a tricky one indeed.

Scrooge, it seemed, hadn’t thought much of his painful past before the spirits intruded upon him with a message to relay—much like our anxiety does upon us. Prior to these events, he had long dissociated from his pain—disregarding the hurting child he once was and exiling this part of his story from his identity. Ebenezer’s healing began to take place when the Ghost of Christmas Past allowed him to behold, and thus feel, his pain. This was Scrooge’s first step toward freedom, as it is for all of us. We will never be rid of our neurosis without first acknowledging the prison our pain still holds us in.

We must move through the pain to get beyond it.

Compulsive behaviors don’t spring forth on their own—they are most often preceded by pain. And choosing to leave this pain to fester in the deep recesses of our minds makes us complicit in the selfish behaviors and dysfunctions it often brings about. Though we learn that Scrooge’s behaviors were driven by greed, I think one could also make the case that his lonely childhood, in which he was forced to fend for himself, may have led to a deep fear of helplessness that drove his greed.

Living out of our hurtful past may not feel much like a choice—but it is. And unfortunately, it’s a choice that has consequences.

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

”I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

The Lesson of Christmas Present

Anxiety keeps us out of the present moment, much like a bouncer at the door of a night club. It creates an inner world that is saturated with what ifs, which stands starkly opposed to the world that is.

Anxiety breeds a kind of nearsightedness that makes us unable to fully see the needs of others—sometimes, even those right in front of us. Which only drives us even deeper down the anxiety spiral, because it’s actually our ability to take up the causes of others that gives us freedom from our own.

Anxiety-mind also robs us of joy and gratitude. We cannot be grateful without presence of mind, and we cannot have presence of mind without gratefulness. When we are truly present to the moment, we can bear witness to the infinite gifts that surround us—both big and small: the companionship of a trusted friend or the way our home lights up at golden hour.

The Ghost of Christmas Present embodied joy and laughter akin to Santa Claus, and this I believe is to remind us that joy can only be experienced in the present. When our anxious minds are finally free to come fully into the moment, we will find that joy has been there waiting for us all along.

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness.”

The Lesson of Christmas Future

The future can be ominous to anyone, but especially to those us who are mainly living in fear. So much so, in fact, that we often push the future out of our awareness altogether. But to one who has integrated the past and present more greatly into their awareness, the future can become a constant reminder of purpose.

It takes a great deal of courage to truly acknowledge the brevity of life, our own fragility, and our small part in the whole story of Creation. But seeing ourselves as a small, but important part of the story is what fills our lives with meaning and purpose—the kind of purpose that drives out fear.

The Ghost of Christmas Future allows Scrooge to see beyond himself to the world he will leave behind if he doesn’t alter his course. His perspective is expanded beyond his current circumstances to include the people around him and the world that will continue to go on after him. This is a sobering but absolutely necessarily realization that puts our lives in true context with a far bigger picture.

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

I believe the most powerful tool we have is the ability to expand our perspective. We can choose to open our awareness to include not only the past, present, and future, but also all the human souls therein whom our actions affect greatly. This is the surest way, and perhaps the only way, to root out needless anxieties and fill our precious days on earth with joy and purpose.

“I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

How to survive November, even if the worst happens.

“Sit with your heels on the black line and reach for your toes,” the gym teacher barked, without looking up from her clipboard.

I did as instructed and tried to ignore the group of onlookers from my third-grade class. It was the President’s Fitness Test in gym class and I had already failed miserably on the sit-ups portion.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, wiggled my toes for good measure, and then reached forth for my toes with every ounce of flexibility I could find within me.

“I said reach for your toes!” the gym teacher barked again.

I looked up from what I thought was a completely bent forward position to realize that even with all that effort, I was still sitting straight up with my hands on my knees.

“I am,” I mumbled back with my face to the ground.

I just hoped the president wasn’t too disappointed.

I started doing yoga in my early 20’s wherein I discovered there was hope for me and my hamstrings yet. I learned I could build up my agility very nearly to an acceptable level. During a particularly enlightening yoga session, the instructor said something that started me on a journey toward another kind of agility—

She said, “this pose shows us the true nature of balance—it is not fixed, but constantly responds and adjusts to the moment.”

It is not fixed, I remember repeating to myself.

I guess it was around that time I started to reflect more on my fixed and rigid beliefs: the automatic thought patterns and resulting emotional cycles that were not conducive to a life of balance at all, but quite oppositely, had me toppling all over the place ungracefully.

In the book Emotional Agility, Susan David writes, “Being emotionally agile involves being sensitive to context and responding to the world as it is right now. “

And this right-now-ness, I’ve realized, is everything. It’s all we really have.

David went on to explain that, “When we become too comfortable with rigid, pre-existing categories, we’re using premature cognitive commitment – a habitual, inflexible response to things, ideas, people, and even ourselves.“

I hate that those words take me immediately to my response to politics in recent years. As a tight emotional hammies kind of person, I can easily fall prey to the political narratives created with the sole purpose of inciting anger and division—our media outlets are saturated with it on every side. Social media platforms have become a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and half-truths that lead to misinformed decisions. It’s a lot to navigate for anyone, but especially for the impulse-driven individuals among us.

The categories we have chosen to unswervingly align with, be it liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, or something classy in-between, these alignments can easily lead us to premature acceptance of misinformation and an even quicker condemnation of any opposing view.

Very recently, in fact, I shared a post in which I raised my font at all of my two or so followers because I was infuriated by an article that came across my screen at 7 am. I jumped out of bed with a racing heart and shaky-anger hands to tell the world about JUSTICE and the TRUTH!

Something one should never do before their morning coffee.

One of my friends was quick to point out that the article I’d posted was only telling half the story and it turned out the other half was a lot less infuriating. Did this new information change my opinion? Not entirely. But did it make me feel like an idiot for impulsively jumping to such a capital-lettered response?

VERY YES.

What makes matters even more complicated is that the more we attempt to educate ourselves about the topics we are passionate about, the more prone we can become to rigid thinking and an inflated self-confidence.

David points out, “Inflated confidence leads [one] to ignore contextual information, and the more familiar an expert is with a particular kind of problem, the more likely he is to pull a prefabricated solution out of his member bank rather than respond to the specific case at hand.”

It turns out that the way in which we seek to educate ourselves also requires us to do a great deal of stretching beforehand. When we read opposing views, we often do so in search of untruths, or for anything that might prove us right—rather than fully taking in the information, sitting with it, doing a few vinyasa flows, and allowing it to give us a greater spectrum of responses to choose from.  

Our emotional ties to these preconceived ideas or categories are much like tight hamstrings. They jerk us around, limit our openness, and probably cause us a great deal of pain. We hurt others and ourselves when we deny realities that make us uncomfortable and are unwilling to consider whether we might be wrong. It is especially dangerous when we cease to examine our hearts at all.

Rigidity always leads to destruction—be it our emotional health, the damaging responses to our triggers, or the vertebrae in our lower backs.

We have to break free from the affiliations we are married to if we have any hope of truly responding in context with the present…if we have any hope of responding out of love. We have to choose to value our emotional health above our illusion of control and we have to protect it more than we do our deep-harbored pride.

Viktor Frankl emerged from years in a concentration camp with a heart that, miraculously, was still soft and open—still able to love. In this, he showed us the incredible power of choosing how we want to respond to the things we can’t control.

Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space… in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

I still can’t touch my toes without bending my knees a little, but I can get into yoga poses that were once impossible, and what’s more, is I can run 3 miles without putting out a hip. I’ve further become convinced that with practice, I can learn to encounter and fully digest deeply opposing viewpoints, I can tolerate the discomfort of being wrong, and even endure an election-gone-wrong by finding the space to truly, fully, and lovingly choose my response.

 Namaste.

How I Survived Dating with Social Anxiety Disorder.

“So… how long are you planning to leave those potatoes in your lap?” he asked, with a mixture of amusement and concern in his eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know. A few more minutes, maybe?” I heard myself shoot back with a nervous laugh.

Honestly, I was surprised anything coherent came out of my mouth at that moment. How does a girl explain to her date that her mashed potatoes had not made it to her mouth because her nervous and shaky hands had caused them to slide off the fork and plop with a warm thud into her lap?

And furthermore, that rather than laugh it off and clean up the potatoes, as any reasonable person would do, she had panicked and chosen to continue eating as if it hadn’t happened.

Nevertheless, the date continued. We took a walk in the park with giant slushies in hand. I was finally starting to loosen up a bit and casually plopped down at a picnic table, which then immediately flipped up backward and knocked both of our slushies into the dirt.

In my defense, it was my very first time dating and I was just then realizing that the social anxiety I’d suffered through in middle school was re-emerging on the dating scene. And it turned out that it was quite a force to be reckoned with.

I think I must have decided at that point that if I could adopt an identity to hide behind, then my insecurities would disappear. I pretended to be a star basketball player, a surfer, a punk-rock-mosh-pitter, an artist, a hippie, a hipster, a partridge in a pear tree, and probably many other things I’ve blocked out.

I have to admit, some of that was fun. But my true identity would always emerge in some inconvenient way. For example, after saying I was a starter on the varsity basketball team in high school, the guy I was seeing decided that he wanted to play basketball, of all things. The last time I had actually played basketball was in middle school wherein I tried to run the ball down the court like a football.

Suffice it to say, it didn’t end well.

When I got tired of that whole shtick, I finally realized that if my fear was not allowed on the date, neither was I. I was never truly present throughout any of those relationships. I had become something of a ghost, a shell of my true self, and if a relationship was going to last like that, it couldn’t possibly be a healthy one.

As Elizabeth Gilbert puts it in her book Big Magic, “Fear has to go on the journey with you or you’ll never go.”

I was in my early 30s when I finally became determined to stop pushing fear out of the process in finding my life partner. I decided to invite the clingy thing along for the ride, so long as he sat quietly in the back seat and didn’t make any complaints about my driving.

And guess what? I survived. And I’m very happy to report that no one was seriously injured in the process. Here’s what I learned along the way—the things I wish I would have known from the beginning:

Tip #1:

You have to learn to be okay with people not being okay with your anxiety disorder.

I know. That’s probably the hardest thing to do as a person with Social Anxiety Disorder. It feels impossible. But I promise you, the more you allow yourself to be honest and bring your fear long with you, the less afraid you’ll be of rejection. You’ll realize it’s actually much less stressful than trying to hide your fear, which we all know is both silly and impossible. Relationships can only truly begin when we actually show up. For better or worse.

Tip #2

Be prepared for your fear to get worse before it gets better. Even if your partner accepts it fully.

Learned coping mechanisms won’t go out easily, and that’s exactly what your fear is—a coping mechanism. Your fear and anxiety are trying to keep you safe, and they think they have your best interests at heart. So when you go against the strict rules they’ve set for you, they may throw a bit of a tantrum—a pity party, if you will. Keep going anyway. This just means fear is on its way toward extinction and it doesn’t like that very much. Keep showing up afraid. Keep being honest, no matter how unflattering it can be. Keep accepting yourself, no matter how sweaty, how shaky, or how neurotic you may become. There is more to you than your fear, but you won’t fully believe that until you have the chance to live it.

Tip #3

Wait for the person who accepts you fully—fear and all.

There are plenty of people who might be willing to tolerate our flaws, but simply tolerating them isn’t enough. This still requires us to keep our issues down to a dull roar so as not to overwhelm your partner to the point of them leaving. In fact, it’s far better to be outright rejected than to stay with a person who mostly accepts you. This may give you just enough happiness to stay and just enough shame to continue hiding, and just enough hurt to keep you from healing. Wait for the person who not only accepts you but empathizes with your weakness—the person who can tell you what their weaknesses are, too. The person who loves you even more because you are so beautifully human and you allow them the opportunity to be fully human alongside you.

This is where shame and fear finally lose power over us: when we are willing to be vulnerable. The great Shame Researcher, Brene Brown famously wrote, “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”

The irony is that when shame stops all of it’s destroying of relationships, it actually can become the force that unites us.

Healthy relationships are our greatest weapon against shame, and as we take down one area of shame after another, we discover greater friendships and bonds with those who walk alongside us.

If social anxiety is standing between you and the relationship(s) you deeply desire, maybe it’s time to stop rejecting this piece of your story and begin bringing it along with you. The person or people you are looking to build relationships with will not only accept this, but will see value in your vulnerability, courage in your honesty, and an opportunity for deep connection in your humanness.

We all have things we feel helpless to change, but maybe these are the very things that can bring us together… and maybe, in our togetherness, they can finally change.

Hey, Church. Stop Shaming Single Women

If someone would have told me when I was in my teens or early twenties that I wouldn’t get married until I was in my mid-thirties, I most likely would have collapsed on the floor with one hand thrown across my forehead in timeless dramatic fashion.

I suppose this is because everything life taught me up to that point was that getting married was my ultimate goal in life; my destiny, if you will. Marriage, children, and good old-fashioned wifery. This was the very reason for my being born.

To be unmarried past my twenties was to be a shame to my family, a disappointment, a failure, and an unwanted, unneeded, forgotten, washed up, lonely exile from society.

I mean, who doesn’t want that?

I have a vivid memory of touring a college campus with my youth group as an early teen when we spotted the car of a woman from our church in the parking lot.

“Poor thing” one person noted. “She’s probably working on her doctorate by now.”

“Why is that bad?” I remember shooting back.

“Because! She’s pushing 30 and still not married. Probably never will.”

I remember looking over at her car in the parking lot with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Even her car looked lonely to me. This intelligent woman I had always looked up to was, apparently, a failure—someone to be pitied. (By the way, she did get married.)

In church, I learned that Eve was created to make Adam happy, to fulfill his needs, help him complete his God-given tasks, birth him some children, raise the children, and then die, essentially. I learned that I was to be his trophy of honor: meek, beautiful, modest, and incredibly crafty at home. This was the ultimate purpose of a Godly woman.

However, the problem for me arose when I realized that I found none of this appealing. I had no true desire to sew handmade clothing for my future children, to spend hours in the kitchen learning to cook, and certainly no desire to practice keeping a clean home. For heaven’s sake, I didn’t even like decorating.

While all my friends were playing with dolls and dreaming of their future families, I was climbing trees, jumping my mountain bike over homemade bike ramps, challenging the neighbors to trampoline gymnastics competitions, and dreaming about the adventures I would go on one day.

I remember feeling deeply ashamed of this, especially when I began to mature and people expected me to have certain womanly competencies. Since I had avoided the kitchen at all costs throughout my upbringing, basic tasks, like chopping veggies, were clumsy and awkward for me.

Somewhere around my late teens, I started to believe I was fatally flawed. And I began to have excruciating shame and anxiety around other people who might discover this truth and confirm it’s reality.

If there’s one thing shame will do, it’s drive us into isolation. That is shame’s personal expertise. He can tear apart even the closest bonds, rip people out of communities, and even separate us from ourselves.

Shame is a jerk.

I think we need to be careful about the expectations we have for each other. The shoulds that drive deep feelings of shame in our closest relationships and society at large…the shoulds that have their roots in our own minds and hearts, but no true bearings in Scripture, or anywhere else for that matter.

I wish I could go back to find that 7-year-old girl in the woods, sit down next to her and explain that it was ok if she was a little bit of a weirdo. That she wasn’t made to simply follow in the footsteps of everyone around her. That it was ok to ask herself what she truly wanted and to go do that thing. And that it was ok she wouldn’t learn to cook or decorate or keep a home until she was well into her thirties…and that even then it would still be debatable.

I wish I could have told her that while all her friends were getting married in her twenties, she would be traveling the world, honing new skills, discovering passions, and making friendships and memories that would treasure more than anything. And that even though others might look at her life and assume there was something wrong with her, she could ignore this completely and enjoy every second of her unexpected path.

I’m astounded by the kind of God we have who has created us all so differently, with unique gifts, dreams and desires. He is the artist weaving together a colorful tapestry, far more intricate and vibrant than our minds can conceive of. I’m so thankful that he guided me, in spite of myself, into the life he designed for me.

Had I given into moments of panic throughout my late twenties and into my thirties, I would have missed out the moments I now treasure more than anything. And most likely, made a terrible mess of things. The experiences that shaped me in the greatest ways were during the time periods that felt the most aimless and chaotic.

Trust me, had I been given the opportunity to bail during those seasons, I would have. But thankfully, I have a Father who wouldn’t allow it. It was in the quiet moments I would hear Him calling me to obedient rebellion of what society had taught me. His love gave me the courage I needed to walk away from all that my heart never truly wanted.

Our true identities are found in those quiet hours in the morning, in the stillness we can hear our Creator calling us into the adventure that he has planned for us. Not in Sunday School, not in the paths of our role models, and not even in the shoulds of those we hold in highest esteem.

When you feel that should panic coming over you, it’s time to come out of the chaos. Let your heart rest in the silence and listen for the Voice that can bring peace to your soul and breath Life into your weary heart. It’s only there you will know how much your Father delights in you and in your unexpected, non-linear, out-of-the-ordinary path.

Quiet your heart and hear him calling you onward, you brave, beautiful girl.

“The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”

— Zephaniah 3:17

The Case For Getting Older.

I’ve never been much of a rollercoaster person.

However, it was Kim’s 30th birthday, and this kind-hearted friend of mine rarely asked for anything more than to pass the salt across the table. And when her only birthday request was to go to an amusement park with her closest friends, I had to say yes—and I had to say it with an enthusiastic squeal.

So there I was. Against my better judgment. Strapped to a rickety seat in my estimation and inwardly preparing to be flung out into eternity.

(Happy Birthday, Kiiiiim!)

From what I could tell, the ride was just a straight shot for the first few seconds, no death-drop immediately at least. However. I was not prepared for the power with which the rollercoaster blasted us forward (at approximately one million miles per second.) We may have been going straight, but my stomach dropped to the floor as if we were free-falling from the sky. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I may have perished momentarily.

I’m telling you this because I have found myself going back to that memory in recent years. Not only because I likely obtained a tinge of PTSD, but also because after I entered my thirties, it was like I sat back down on that rollercoaster and life started blasting forward at the same ungodly pace.

Suddenly, the seasons are coming and going so quickly I barely have a minute to notice. By the time I hang up my last sweater for the winter, cherry blossoms are exploding all over the city. And with every glance in the mirror, another wrinkle seems to be making itself at home on my face.

What I’m saying is that sometimes life is flying by so fast it knocks the wind out of me. This is the kind of thing you can be lighthearted about when you’re young and free and running around barefoot in fields of daisies. But as we mature, the brevity of life forces it’s way rudely into our awareness; our delusion of invincibility begins to fall apart— year by year, wrinkle by wrinkle, and bit by wobbly bit.

I vividly remember sitting in a restaurant at 29-years-old when my date took it upon himself to inform me that I was “in my prime.” His poetic way of saying, act now while your ovarian supplies last. Suffice it to say, that was the end of that romance. But his words continued to haunt me long after that night… was he right? Was it really all downhill from there?

Upon entering my thirties, I found myself in an Alice in Wonderland sort of situation. I was trapped inside an ever-shrinking room with no way out, which is the sort of thing that can really make a person panic, especially if this person is a bit claustrophobic.

The more days that passed, the more I was drowning under the weight of societal pressures, irrational fears, and my own unrealized dreams. I had no idea how deeply my spirit was longing to break free from the prison my own mindset had created for me.

“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

— Psalm 18:19

In all my frizzy frazzle-dazzle, I had forgotten the kind of Father I have. I had forgotten His lavish, long-suffering, unrelenting, unchanging love. I had forgotten that He withholds nothing good from those he loves. Nothing.

And it was this remembering that gave me the courage I needed to deal with the whole morality thing. It loosened my grip on the clock, tore down the walls closing in on me, and let me off the gosh-forsaken rollercoaster.

I could breathe again.

The very difficult thing about life is that it rarely listens to us. You say go right and it takes a sharp left. You say jump and it lays down and plays dead. This life of ours is a wayward, maddening thing.

But this is actually not our biggest problem.

What leads us into a suffocating prison situation is our own unwillingness to accept reality for what it is. We work ourselves up into a tizzy attempting to control this stubborn life-thing, and all the while, we are miserable, aging creatures missing out on the precious days and weeks we have on earth.

“Occasionally, weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.”

— John Piper

Maybe part of what makes our lives fly by the way they do is that we are so preoccupied with controlling them, we aren’t really present in them. Rather than actively participating in our lives, we are marching around outside of it with picket signs: “No, no we won’t get old!” (Or something of that nature.)

Acceptance is the only way to embrace the life we have been given. But this kind of thing is counter-intuitive in a society that thrives off of our delusions of control. How many billions of dollars are we willing to throw away to push off the reality of our weakening bodies and lack of immortality?

The heartbreaking truth is that the more we invest in this lie, the more we grow to despise ourselves. We are forking over our most valuable resources to hide from the world… and even worse, to hide from ourselves.

The maturing man or woman in you deserves more than this. He or she deserves to be fully seen, fully known, and fully loved. But we cannot be truly loved or known when we are in hiding.

And isn’t this what we long for the most during our precious time on earth? To be known, to be loved, to belong? These are the deepest longings of our hearts and we have pushed them out of reach by feeding this illusion of invincibility.

Maybe where we need to begin is by telling ourselves the truth, and saying, “Self, you are getting old and wrinkly and rickety, but I accept you nonetheless.”

And maybe then we can present ourselves to the world without shame and without fear, and thus experience the deepest sense of love and belonging our hearts could ever imagine. Maybe it is in this kind of love that will can taste eternity.

Indeed, our days may be short…but may they also be full.

How to Love a Nervous Human

I doubt I could have been much more than three years old, but I can still remember how I was slouching down in my car seat, trying to soothe the stomach ache I had from being homesick.

My brother and I were staying with my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Ken for the weekend so that my parents could have a little vacation “up north,” as the Michigan parents tend to do. This is the first memory I have of being away from my parents for more than a few hours, and I distinctly remember feeling a little unsure about the whole idea.

Aunt Elaine had already picked up on to my separation anxiety, probably long before I was aware of it myself. I remember staring at her reassuring smile in the rear view mirror as we ventured toward our picnic in the park—it was a little-known cure for homesickness that my aunt had up her sleeve.

When we arrived, my aunt pulled out the quintessential checkered blanket from her picnic basket that she had packed with special treats she knew we’d love. I remember the bright, pink jam she made herself and the refreshing lemonade she poured into glass cups that sparkled in the sun. The scene was like something out of a movie on a sunny afternoon in June… and it was just what my heart needed.

I soon learned that this was my Aunt Elaine’s super power: she could turn any ordinary circumstance into a magical moment that made you feel like the most important human being on earth.

She was always busy in the kitchen preparing something wonderful for someone. But it wasn’t just her cooking abilities that made people begin to feel better (although that surely didn’t hurt)—it was the love and joy with which she did it.

And that day at the park, it wasn’t actually the picnic itself that I remembered most. The drive home is what has remained etched in my mind for over 30 years. It was one of the first pictures I had of the love of God that met my 3-year-old heart in the middle of my homesickness.

As we pulled away from the park and onto the dirt roads, we passed beneath a canopy of oak trees overhead. The sunlight weaved through the leaves in tiny little specks that danced all over the car windows. My brother and I let out squeals of excitement over the beauty of it all.

“Do it again! Do it again!” We exclaimed.

“Alright, let’s do it again,” Aunt Elaine said, chuckling. And with that, she turned the car around to make a second trip beneath the magical tree canopy.

Looking back, it must have been ten times she turned around and drove back down that road again, laughing and squealing with us the whole way.

I’m sure she had a long list of things she could have been doing that day, but instead, she chose to honor the seemingly futile requests of her niece and nephew, just for a little more joy and little more laughter.

My aunt knew these little gestures would one day help my brother and I to understand the kind of joyful love our Creator had for us. And I saw over the years how she wanted every person she met to know this same kind of love—that they were worth driving the extra mile, even if she already driven it ten times prior.

As I grew up, my aunt continued to show me what genuine love for another human looks like—the kind of love that meets a person right where they are with no expectations at all.

I began having social anxiety very young, even at family events. I remember choking my dinner down and asking to leave the table so I could go play in my room alone where it was safe.

But Aunt Elaine would always find me. She would get down on the floor with me and play with my dolls, or maybe start singing, or doing a little dance until I started to laugh… and the fear would begin to evaporate.

I didn’t realize it then, but she was on a mission to convince me I was still worth loving, whether I stayed at the table or ran to my room alone—I was still worth seeking out.

The artful way my aunt loved people brought a little of God’s kingdom here on earth. And now that she has gone home to be with the One who taught her how to love so well, I have been reflecting on how I can continue to love like she did.

Very unfortunately I didn’t inherit her skills in the kitchen, outgoing personality, or crafty homemaking abilities. However, I can tell you I did inherit her goofiness and desire to see others laugh their way to peace and freedom. My aunt wasn’t afraid to be silly and I believe this was one of her most powerful tools for bringing healing to others—it certainly was for me.

Vincent van Gogh famously stated, “The more I think, the more I know, there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

When I look at my aunt’s life I can see this love-art so clearly. There is no formula she followed for loving someone well. Like art, her love was colorful, fluid, moment to moment, and always new.

My aunt’s life taught me that loving someone is simply using the gifts you have been given to go the extra mile (or ten) through the wooded road. It’s meeting someone right in the midst of their anxiety to make them laugh, or sing, or dance, or squeal with excitement. These are the artful moments they will always remember… the moments that will help them to believe how very much they are worth loving.

“If we have no peace it is because we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other.”

— Mother Teresa

Self-Love and Humility Have More in Common than You Think

"Red Alert! " Ashley declared to the class with her hands cupped around her mouth. "Mandi's nervous!"

Quiet chuckles rippled through the room. My classmates knew very well this was going to be an entertaining several minutes in which I would attempt to complete a “playing test” in band class. During this grueling experience, one must stand up and play a song on their instrument for a grade in front of the entire band.

I felt like I was going to die. I was going to throw up, and then I was going to die. Nevertheless, I raised my trembling cornet and tried to ignore the amused faces looking back at me.

Then it all went black. Or, at least, it mostly went black. I do recall at one point I hit a note so unthinkable that all eyes in the classroom tripled size.

My friends later informed me that I managed to play the entire song from beginning to end with an abnormal amount of vibrato—I guess as a consequence of my shaking.

"It sounded like there was an earthquake and you just played right through it," one friend said, encouragingly.

This was all just standard procedure in my young neurotic life. Any time I had to do anything in front of an audience, some kind of disaster occurred. It had become my trademark in school so much that there was an alert system in place.

If you would have asked me then what I was so afraid of, I might have said it was the judgement and possible rejection by my classmates, or the constant feeling of humiliation from failure. But what I’ve realized since those horrific middle-school days is that what I was really afraid of was myself.

Let me be the first to tell you that if you avoid circumstances where individuals will witness something you refuse to accept about yourself, it will foster a great deal of anxiety. For me, this meant any event through which others would observe my anxiety. By their witness to it, it would confirm the ghastly and unthinkable reality that I often experienced… fear.

So there’s a thing that happens when we refuse to accept something about ourselves, counterintuitive, though, it may seem: Pride.

Pride happens.

Pride is the wall we build between ourselves and the unsavory flaws we refuse to acknowledge. It’s a powerful wall indeed—one our current president couldn’t even dream of. And while this wall ensures we will keep out the reality of our flaws, it also ensures that we will keep away the people, life experiences, and truths that go along with it.

The other rather glaring problem with the wall is that it blocks out peace—because as I’ve discovered—one cannot experience peace with the world and in relation to others if they refuse to live in reality along with them.

Peace and truth are irreversibly connected. We can’t truly have one without the other.

True self-acceptance and self-love are evident in a person who has done the dirty and unflattering work of tearing down the wall between themselves and the flaws they detest the most. They have greeted and made peace with the very things they believe are unlovable, unthinkable, and utterly detestable.

This kind of work, however, cannot be done alone. It takes a village—a tribe of dedicated individuals marching around the stubborn walls of Jericho. It takes the power of Jesus himself to break down this pride-wall, brick by unflattering brick.

In her book Restoring the Christian Soul, Leanne Payne wrote, “The humble acceptance of myself as fallen but now justified by Another who is my righteousness is the basis on which I can accept myself, learn to laugh at myself, and be patient with myself. “

In my case, this wall-deconstructing party took decades. But I knew I was reaching the other side when I was willing to go talk to a counselor and psychiatrist, and when I was willing to talk about my anxiety openly. I knew I was finding freedom when I could allow others to witness my fear—because I had finally allowed myself to be a witness to it.

When we hear people talk about self-love, we might be tempted to think self-focus and self-centeredness, and that maybe even pride and overconfidence are what’s driving it. But I believe a healthy self-love is rooted in the humility of self-acceptance.

I’ve sure that even today if was faced with a “playing test” the same feelings of fear and horror would shoot through me. But maybe instead of blacking out in fear, I would join the others in laughing at the shaky, sweaty mess that I would become. Maybe, I would show up with my whole self and battle through with gratitude because I know no greater freedom than to stare my weakness in the face and laugh.

“The act of self-acceptance is the root of all things. I must agree to be the person who I am. Agree to have the qualifications that I have. Agree to live within the limitations set for me. The clarity and courageousness of this acceptance is the foundation of all existence.” — Romano Guardino, Catholic Philosopher-Theologian

If Self-Criticism is Getting You Down

I immediately spotted the curly-headed, Scottish man upon entering the coffee shop—he was, no surprise, surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, leaning in to catch his every word.

I’d heard he was some kind of prophet. While others sought out his sage advice, I avoided him at all costs. There was something deeply disconcerting, in my opinion, about a stranger looking straight into my soul and speaking truthful things—most likely things I’d made considerable efforts to avoid acknowledging.

He found me anyway. I made the rookie mistake of sitting alone at the table while my college roommate was still waiting at the counter for her beverage.

“Thankfulness is the way forward,” he said, with a knowing smile. (Among many other sage things that are now a bit of a blur.)

And now, years later, I still go back to those words: thankfulness is the way forward.

What I didn’t realize then—thank heavens—was that I was about to fall face-first into the debilitating, soul-sucking quicksand self-criticism. A series of difficult events unfolded one right after the other, and suddenly, it was as if I was living outside of myself, criticizing my own every move.

It shouldn’t be too difficult for one to imagine how problematic this sort of thing can be. I began to suffer such extreme self-doubt that I feared it was going to swallow me up completely. My life was The Never-Ending Story and I was the sinking horse. May he RIP.

After an inconvenient several years of fighting these self-critical thoughts, it finally made sense to me what the Scottish prophet was saying—the way out was thankfulness… of all things.

But how, you ask? Thankfulness takes us beyond ourselves. It takes us out from the tunnel vision of self-pity and opens our eyes to see what was invisible before; namely, the beauty that’s in absolutely everything.

Going just beyond ourselves is actually the foundation of emotional well-being. Conversely, tunnel vision to our own needs is the root of most mental illness. If you can imagine a broken record re-playing the same notes over and over—that is essentially what happens in your mind when anxiety, depression, and self-criticism sink their dirty little claws in.

Something has to free us from the loop of unhelpful thinking.

And guess what else? Science.

According to the research of Nicola Petrocchi & Alessandro Couyoumdjian (2016), “Gratitude is a protective factor against psychopathology not only due to its association with improved relationships with others, but also because it is connected to a less critical, less punishing, and more compassionate relationship with the self.”

Furthermore, their study found that “Gratitude shows an exceptional degree of incremental validity in predicting well-being above the traits most studied in psychology.”

The unflattering truth is that we can actually become addicted to our own debilitating hell of self-focus.

For many of us, this is because somewhere along the way we were hurt, and we thought it was our fault—that maybe if we had done something different, or more perfectly, the hurt wouldn’t have happened to us. And now we try to be perfect. And we keep trying and trying and trying.

I got winded just typing that.

If you identify with this tendency, you know as well as I do that this mindset hasn’t protected you from anything. Quite oppositely, it’s kept you from a lot of really wonderful things—things that fear of failure and the shame of imperfection keep perpetually out of your grasp.

But the very good news is there is a way forward—a way out of the quicksand—and it’s gratitude.

Now, you might be in a place where the very idea of gratitude alone is almost laughable, and that’s ok. You can begin by simply training your mind to notice.

Just notice.

Notice the colors, the feels, the charming, little quirks in the people around you, notice the smell of the bread baking (do people still bake bread?) notice the sound of the rain falling. Even this simple act of noticing is taking you beyond yourself.

It’s opening up the prison door and leading you out. 

On days when sadness or anxiety has been particularly gripping, I resort to being thankful for anything my mind can come up with: Legs, feet, eyes, hands, etc. Straight to the basics. And immediately, my mind opens from just my current issue to the perspective of someone living without the things I take for granted.

One little shift beyond myself and fear loses power.

Just beyond yourself is the place you’ll find peace, not only because your focus changes, but also because you are learning to truly see. And this, I think, is the most beautiful part of it all. The more you practice gratitude, the more you’ll see:

Fear and despair are liars—thanksgiving is the truth.

Just beyond
yourself.

It’s where
you need
to be.

Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.

There is a road
always beckoning.

When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon
and deep in
the foundations
of your own
heart
at exactly
the same
time,
that’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.

That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.

That’s how
you know
you have
to go.

That’s
how you know.

Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be. 

—Just Beyond Yourself, David Whyte

Nicola Petrocchi & Alessandro Couyoumdjian (2016) The impact of gratitude on depression and anxiety: the mediating role of criticizing, attacking, and reassuring the self, Self and Identity, 15:2, 191-205, DOI: 10.1080/15298868.2015.1095794

If you feel like you're falling behind

I still clearly remember the exceedingly casual way Melody’s hair was strewn atop her head when I walked into her house without knocking. It was a dreary fall morning and I didn’t have the emotional capacity for things like manners.

Melody didn’t miss a beat when she saw me standing in the middle of her living room clasping a steaming mug of coffee I had haphazardly transported from my house to hers. Melody invited me to have a seat on the couch so we could talk about it—whatever on earth it was.

I explained how this particular morning had seemed like an ideal time to panic about being in my thirties and not yet having birthed a gaggle of children dressed in hand-sewn vegan materials whom I feed from my well-kept garden brimming with nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables, all while wearing pilates pants.

Quite oppositely, I considered it a successful day if I remembered to use a coupon; this was not the kind of victory I imagined having in my thirties.

Melody took a deep breath and propped her legs up—clearly, very alarmed by my emergency. Then, in true Melody fashion, she spoke timely words of wisdom that seemed at first completely irrelevant.

 “You have to learn how to play again,” she said, clasping her hands behind her head. “You know how Scripture talks about God’s kingdom being for the children? That’s because it is filled with imaginative, playful people, like children. You are so busy trying to live up to societal pressures that you forgot how to actually live.”

 I stared blankly and tried to take it in.

“You have to go back to the playground, “she added, after a few moments of silence.

I glanced out the window and suddenly noticed the way the wind was weaving through the vibrant yellow-orange leaves outside; even on a gray and rainy morning the colors were breathtaking. It was almost as if they were joining the conversation and inviting me to come and play.

 I wondered if my coffee was stronger than usual.

“Your job, your daily tasks… anything can be play,” Melody went on. “Life is all play when you have the right mindset. There is so much joy in every moment if we have the desire and calmness of mind to see it.”

I sat stunned. Melody’s words were simple and yet they were breathing life back into my frazzled soul. Just ten minutes began an unraveling of everything the last decade had taught me: work, achieve, do, keep up, get, compete, perform, perfect. These were the slave drivers leaving me exhausted, empty handed, and increasingly ungrateful.

I cradled my very-cold-by-now coffee in my hands and began to reflect on why I felt such pressure to reach these perceived societal standards. Did I truly even want these things or was I so consumed with what others wanted for me that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore?

If there’s anything that will keep you from the playground, it’s developing tunnel vision on meeting others’ expectations. This mindset drives us off the swings and straight into the factory where we perform empty, conditioned behaviors and hope they will eventually lead to the validation we crave. Sadly, the only thing we get in the factory is exhaustion, depression, and probably some form of lung cancer.

I have since found myself returning to the playful spirit I knew long before fear and envy stifled it into hiding. Little by little, I’m learning to savor instead of consume, observe instead of rush, meditate instead of analyze, and listen instead of talk. (Albeit imperfectly. )

I’ve made it a point to give thanks far more often than I ask why.

Slowly, my mindset is beginning to change. I no longer see myself as the victim of falling behind, but as deeply loved and incredibly fortunate to be living out the purpose God planned uniquely for me. I am coming to believe that I have enough and am enough.

The problem with looking around at others to determine where we should be (aside from it leading us completely astray) is that it causes a hyper focus on what we don’t have. Comparison leads us to believe we are being robbed of something we deserve, when in reality, it’s our own victim mentality that’s robbing us of enjoying what we do have.

The very worst part of factory life is that keeps us inside a stuffy, dark dungeon, far away from the revelations of our unique purpose and true worth. These tiny, but powerful messages are interwoven all throughout creation—even in things like vibrant, autumn leaves.

Life is waiting for you on the playground.

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended we are here to become more and more ourselves.”

— Jim Hollis, via Brene Brown, Dare to Lead

The Counter-Intuitive Case for Weakness

Do you remember the first time you felt like a failure? Your very first red-faced encounter with humiliation and self-doubt?

I do. I was taking the big test to make the transition from preschool to kindergarten. I’d been practicing drawing shapes and naming colors like it was my job, and as far as I was concerned, I was the most qualified 4-year-old in Linden, Michigan.

But I wasn’t prepared for what happened with the blocks. What probably was the equivalent of stacking them up like a tower felt to me like constructing the Sistine Chapel by hand. I can’t recall exactly what I was asked to do, but I very clearly remember the feeling of shame that washed over me when the test moderators tried to stifle their laughter at my inability to accomplish it.

To this very much later day, I flash right back to that scene with the blocks, and the panic, and the laughing people when presented with an opportunity to complete some kind of mechanical task.

These seemingly trivial encounters with inadequacy as children can impact our lives all the way into adulthood. Why? Because children without the reasoning or emotional development to make sense of their experiences do the only thing they can think of to cope with pain — they bury it.

And the problem with burying our weakness is that it opens the door for shame, which is the single most toxic emotion to our physical and mental health.

The more convinced we are that our weakness undermines our worth, the more power it has to control our lives. Shame of weakness stunts our growth and locks away critical parts of our personalities where they can never grow up or heal.

In this way, many of us still carry a small child inside who was humiliated into hiding, and if we have any hope of healing, we first have to let this child out into the light.

We will have to say we’re sorry for locking him or her away for so many years and that we hope they weren’t very claustrophobic. We will have to let them into our lives, our counseling sessions, and our closest relationships. We will have to let them awkwardly reacquaint themselves with the world.

When we finally stop trying so hard to transform our weakness, we may find it ends up transforming us. 

Weakness is vulnerable, but fertile ground. It is the place where true acceptance and belonging are born. It is the force that drives us deeper into meaningful relationships and straight into the heart of God.

Years ago, a friend directed my attention to an oak tree in my yard and casually said something that changed my life. She explained that it was the tree’s need for water and nutrients that drove its roots further into the ground, making it taller, stronger, and more beautiful. It was what the tree was unable to produce on its own that ultimately made it thrive.

“And the same goes for us,” she brilliantly concluded.

Our weakness can either drive us into fear and isolation or it can drive us deeper into life-giving relationships. It can cause us to become frail and lifeless or it can force our roots deeper into the fertile soil of acceptance and belonging.

Even though I still experience the same irrational fear when confronted with certain types of tasks, I now recognize this uncomfortable feeling as an opportunity—a chance to first accept myself as I am, and secondly, to open the door for vulnerability and true connection with those around me.

Unflattering though it may seem, voicing our weakness is the only way to usher in the kind of connection we're made to experience.

What if the very weakness you think is keeping you from love and acceptance is actually the path to receiving it?

No Matter How Your Heart is Grieving

No sooner had I learned the importance of allowing myself to feel and process sadness when grief showed up at my door with all his luggage in tow.  And by the looks of it, he was planning on staying for a while.

So, given the circumstances, I did the most logical thing I could think of. I took everything I learned in the last year about dealing with emotions properly and threw it out the window. I told grief to make himself at home but that I had a very busy schedule coming up and we probably wouldn't be seeing much of each other.

At all. 

This seemed like an ideal arrangement to me. Essentially, grief moved in and I moved out. And it was all going great until I realized how much I disliked being homeless. 

There's an overwhelming amount of research that shows a correlation between unprocessed grief and neurosis—it seems all the scientists agree: we have to feel to heal. So the truly terrible news is we can't just allow grief into our lives and then make ourselves scarce.

We have to spend some quality time with it.

In my valiant attempts to avoid grief, one unrelenting verse followed me around like some kind of holy haunting: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted."

When I finally slowed down enough to let those words wash over me, I realized I was missing a crucial part of the picture. (And when I say a crucial part, I mean basically the entire picture.)

Feeling the intensity of our emotions can be a terrifying thing if we miss the promise that comes with it—God's comfort. Broken hearts don't need answers or solutions, they need an experience.

When our lives fall apart, what we need more than anything is to be scooped up into our Father's arms and reminded—through a felt sense—that we are deeply loved and everything is going to be okay. Without this, we hold onto our hurt until it turns into debilitating fear and depression.

And this is why: grief will either convince us we're alone or reveal to us we're not.

The reason we have to feel to heal is because it's only when we feel our pain we can feel God's comfort. And His promise to us is that He's waiting in the midst of our pain to wrap His arms around us. He draws near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).

But even more importantly: God's comfort doesn't just heal us, it equips us to become healers.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ." (2 Cor. 1-3-5)

Because of this, every grief-stricken hour holds incredible value—the comfort we receive is ours to change the world with. These are the moments we become agents of hope to the hurting.

Those who bring healing to a broken world are those who’ve been held by their Father.

Are you willing?

The world needs you to be.

Sadness and Anxiety: A Surprising Relationship

There was a deep blue sky in my rearview mirror and flood warnings on the radio as I drove to my first counseling appointment. Yes, this would be my third new therapist in a year—but this time, I was determined to stick it out.

"There is one really good thing about anxiety," she said. "It's painful. It hurts so much that it forces you to do something about it."

She was right. If my anxiety hadn't been so unbearable, I wouldn't be sitting awkwardly on the couch of yet another therapist. But there I was, doing exactly what I didn't want to do, seeking the healing I didn't want to seek. And ironically, I had my anxiety to thank for that.

But if anxiety was just the painful agent driving me to seek healing, then what was it I really needed healing from?

"I've found that most people who deal with anxiety have at some point turned off their other emotions," she explained. "For example, some people are unable to process sadness."

"Do you think you know how to be sad?" she asked.

I nodded confidently as my mind flashed through all the very healthy ways I cope with sadness: Jillian Michaels, Cabernet Sauvignon, the Target clearance section, salted caramel anything . . . 

The nodding slowed. Maybe I didn't know how to be sad. Suddenly I couldn't  think of a single instance that I had actually allowed myself to feel it. And for that matter, did I even know what it felt like? When I tried to recall the feeling of sadness, all I felt was fear.

"You must be exhausted," she said, with her empathetic counselor eyes. "It takes a ton of energy and resources to avoid feeling pain." 

I felt my chin start to tremble.

No. Not this, I thought. Not the ugly quiver chin.

I considered faking a phone call, or excusing myself to the bathroom, or abruptly changing the subject, or just straight up playing dead. Something. 

But I knew that would all be counterproductive. After all, this was the reason I had come. Not to mention, playing dead would most likely get me a far more serious diagnosis. So I did what I thought I couldn't. I sat there and let sadness wash over me in all its glory.  

I'm happy to report that I survived. And when that horrible 30 seconds had passed, I realized I had traded a little pride and fear for an unusual amount of peace. Not a bad deal, as it turns out.  

I've never seen it rain like it did the day I left her office, and I couldn't help but laugh at the timeliness of it. My weary, neurotic soul needed a torrential downpour just as much as the thirsty soil needed rain.

According to Tim Clinton and Gary Sibcy, in the book Attachments:
All neuroticism, or unnecessary pain, is caused by the avoidance of legitimate pain.

Fellow neurotics, this is a game changer. All my life I thought neuroticism was just biology, but the truth is, it's rooted in unhealthy coping mechanisms. If we are unwilling to feel our pain, we will have to work really hard to avoid it. 

Enter: anxiety. 

Truly processing the difficult emotions we encounter means inviting others into it. We need someone there to hear us out,  identify with us, and provide comfort in the midst of our sorrow. 

"Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted."

As my therapist likes to say: if the wound came through relationship, so will the healing.

Although it can be terrifying to let others into our pain, this is where all true connection is born, and connection is the only thing that makes us fully alive.

So if we are willing to feel our pain, and if we choose to let others into it, we might find even more than freedom from fear . . .

We might find joy. 

What the Cross Means for Your Anxiety Disorder

His cloudy blue eyes squinted with thoughtful concern as I told him my story. Something I hadn't planned on doing. I assumed I'd be in and out of the doctor's office in less than an hour. But there I was, saying everything. And there he was, listening carefully.

I told him that I'd had anxiety forever.  That, when I was three, my preschool teacher held a meeting with my parents because my hands were shaking when I was learning how to use scissors. She thought I was going through something terrible, but it turned out I was just stressed about the scissors.

"I've never known life outside of anxiety," I said. "And I'm finally willing to admit this might be chemical."  

I looked up to find the doctor appearing even more like a grandfather than he did when I began. I had tried to disguise the shame I felt with frequent smiles and nervous laughs, but the look of deep compassion on his face informed me I hadn't succeeded.

For a moment it was silent. But it wasn't the uncomfortable kind of silence, loaded with judgement and ridicule. It was the safe kind, filled with empathy and concern. 

"Now I know that Scripture says to be anxious for nothing," he said, eyes steady and serious. "But I don't want you to take that and feel guilty. We live in a fallen world with fallen neurotransmitters...

"This isn't your fault. Do you understand that?" 

Tears filled my eyes as I nodded. 

Somehow he knew I needed to hear those words even more than I needed medication.

Many will tell you the Cross means your anxiety disorder shouldn't exist, but I'm here to tell you the Cross means it's okay.

It's okay to be broken. It's okay to seek help. It's okay to need medication.

Jesus showed up in my brokenness that afternoon and kindly informed me I had everything backwards. Anxiety wasn’t keeping me from wholeness—shame was.

The Cross made healing possible first by annihilating shame—by lifting the veil that separates us from the truth about our brokenness. And the truth is, it's okay. 

For the six months that followed, I chose to give my weary brain a break. My doctor prescribed a mild anti-anxiety medication that helped me stop avoiding things that scared me, and I finally began to taste a life outside of fear.

For many of us, this is an absolutely necessary step to recovery. Taking medication doesn't mean you don't trust God. Quite oppositely, it means you trust him enough to guide you down this unfamiliar path to healing.

Are there risks to consider? Of course. Should you seek advice from a professional counselor? Absolutely. But because of the Cross, we don't have to live in fear (or shame) of any of that.

So if you feel broken and afraid and ashamed about all of it, here's what I recommend:

Take a deep breath and ask for what you need . . .

Because the Cross means it’s okay.

Why You Can't Pray Away Your Anxiety

Believe me. I've tried. 

I've been praying against anxiety for almost as long as I could spell it. But it wasn't until 31 I realized why it wasn't working.

I had finally decided to start counseling because nothing else seemed to be working—not prayer, not wine, not even JCrew. Things were getting desperate. I pulled up to a tiny white house in the middle of nowhere and wondered if this whole thing was a joke. Or if I was going to be murdered. Neither seemed ideal.

But this particular counselor was working on his licensure and therefore happened to be free of charge. I decided it was worth the risk.

He was younger than I thought he'd be, and not even the slightest bit ugly. If he was going to be my age, the least he could do is be a little ugly. No one should ever have to tell a good-looking stranger their problems. But I remembered again that the whole thing was free . . . I had nothing to lose but every trace of dignity.

"It sounds like you have a bit of social anxiety," he said.

I folded my clammy hands tightly in my lap and nodded. 

"And it also sounds like your goal is to get over your anxiety while telling as few people about it as possible, am I right?"

" . . .Yeah, I guess so," I said, shrugging. It seemed reasonable to me.

"Well, the good news is that you can overcome this anxiety. The bad news is that if you do so in secret, you won't have accomplished anything. What you really fear is being honest."

I was getting irritated. 

"People come in here all the time wanting to be healed in secret," he continued. "And the irony is, it's the secrets that keep them from healing."

For an amateur counselor, he was annoyingly profound.

Ever since I've looked at healing in a completely different way. My anxiety is only the symptom of a bigger problem: the unwillingness to let others into the dark places in my heart and bring a little light with them. 

I read recently that the U.S. has the highest anxiety rates in the world. We have more wealth and opportunity than we know what to do with, and yet we are poor beyond comprehension because we don't know how to trust each other.

We don't know how to say, "I'm afraid. I'm tired. I'm weak. I'm broken. I need you."

We lock ourselves away in prayer closets, hoping God will zap us of our weakness so we can walk into community all confident and holy . . . so we can bring healing to others without asking anything in return.

And our Father isn't getting on board with this plan. He has lavished us in his love through the gift of community, but we will never truly experience that love if won't don't open ourselves up to it.

What weakness have you been trying to pray away?

Maybe God isn't saying no. Maybe his yes is waiting for you in community.