Make Life Less Hard

I am totally opposed to this belief that we should celebrate doing hard things as if hard things are awesome gifts. Hard things are stressful and can be traumatic. This is why my blood pressure goes up when somebody posts on Facebook, "Hey, I think kids who got spanked turned out better than those who were put in time out." This is utter bullshit - pardon my language. This kind of misinformation drives me nuts! Do you know how many grown ups slink into my office and recount the trauma and humiliation associated with being parented by an adult who took out their rage on a little kid and called in discipline? Again, I've said this before, do you notice how many high functioning adults we have dependent on alcohol to get through their day? Is anyone else curious as to the high rate of addiction and mental health disorders? Where do we think these problems originate? Trauma. Genetics. Deprivation - a belief that the world is not a place that cares or supports us when we are struggling.

However, I am thrilled with this concept that when faced with hard things, we will be less stressed and perhaps less traumatized if we recognize that life is hard. We are not being picked on, life is not treating us unfairly, we are not more stupid or especially cursed. We are living life. Life is hard.

Given that, I am on a personal mission to try to NOT make life harder than it has to be for myself or others. This requires me to learn and grow and accept responsibility for my life - every little piece of it. It requires us to go out and find the support we need heal and grow SO THAT we learn what support looks like - and we can support others as we have been supported.

The goal is not to make life easy; the work is to figure out how to mitigate the damage caused when life is hard and we do not have the resources we need to survive and eventually thrive as a result of what we are learning.

Today, try not to make life harder for yourself or those you love. Life is hard enough without us making it harder.

Are You Trying to Change the Wrong Things?

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

There are times in life, of course, when things are mostly outside of our control, which is to say, our influence over these events is small but we have some level of permission to attempt to influence them.  There are things that are mostly within our control (we have permission to influence and our potential to influence is high).  As far as this particular discussion goes, I'm not concerned with these grey areas.  I'm choosing to ignore them.  I'm not doing so because I doubt they exist (I believe they do), I'm ignoring them because they don't draw the worst out of us in ways that encounters with absolute powerlessness do.  

We are keeping our focus on the distorted illusion of control that comes from our encounters with powerlessness.  I know that this is the area where I need the most work.  I suspect I'm not alone.  

Present Scott’s attack on Past Scott:

Past Scott was very hard on people who struggle to make changes. Control, and our frustration around control, is what happens when we’re struggling to live a life we’re excited to live. I suppose, if I were to rephrase the above in a less shaming way, I’d say that we don’t always choose well when it comes to where we focus our energy in life when we’re frustrated with how life is going. In other words, we often try to change the wrong things. 

So I have some more questions for you:

What is something you’d like to be doing more of in your current life?

What are some relationships you’d like to spend more of your energy on?

What are some things that bring you joy that you don’t do as much of anymore? 

Day 23: The Realities of God's Love

We continue on our 40 day sprint toward the celebration of the birth of Christ. Holding to long standing traditions, this time offers us the challenge of self-reflection. It’s a way to prepare for the party. One way that helps us do so is to practice various spiritual disciplines intended to increase our self-awareness. In particular, we maintain mindfulness about God’s steady disposition and inclination of love toward us. Otherwise, we will struggle to make some progress in the journey of transformation. Adam and Eve forgot this about God and ended up hiding behind fig leaves. This is not a good look. We must be prepared to wrestle with the reality of God’s love. Our own ambivalence about ourselves can sometimes cause us to project these harsh self-judgments onto God. This does NOT promote transformational work. Unlike Santa, God doesn’t just love us only when we’re nice. He loves us when we’re naughty too. Jesus loves the whole of us.

We wrestle long and hard in our community with what it means to live a holy life. Once in a while, someone will start thinking that holiness means that we should all strive to be SuperHuman – capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound – for the sake of Christ, of course. When that happens, fingers start wagging.

One Sunday when we were still gathering in person, someone fell asleep in church. This offended his accountability team, and they got up in his face, demanding that he make restitution for falling asleep in church. His behavior, according to his cohorts, made the whole team look bad. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say that the good news is, all this piety did not lead to any punches being thrown…a near miss.

No one asked me to weigh in on the subject, but if they had, this is what I would have said. “You know what? He was here. He wasn’t on the streets. He wasn’t in a crack house. He was sitting in church, with a group of people who have nodded off in odd places countless times. That’s what happens when people are homeless and go days without food (and use a lot of crack). He was here, in the community. He showed up. That’s a good day.”

I’m much more impressed that he showed up than concerned about whether he stayed awake. I don’t consider falling asleep in church offensive. I tend to think it is a natural response for a guy who has been fed a good meal, is sitting in a heat-filled room surrounded by folks that he is pretty confident aren’t going to beat him up or steal from him. We are privileged and yes, responsible to love the whole self of others, not just the ones who can stay awake through the sermon!

Day 23: The Realities of God's Love

We continue on our 40 day sprint toward the celebration of the birth of Christ. Holding to long standing traditions, this time offers us the challenge of self-reflection. It’s a way to prepare for the party. One way that helps us do so is to practice various spiritual disciplines intended to increase our self-awareness. In particular, we maintain mindfulness about God’s steady disposition and inclination of love toward us. Otherwise, we will struggle to make some progress in the journey of transformation. Adam and Eve forgot this about God and ended up hiding behind fig leaves. This is not a good look. We must be prepared to wrestle with the reality of God’s love. Our own ambivalence about ourselves can sometimes cause us to project these harsh self-judgments onto God. This does NOT promote transformational work. Unlike Santa, God doesn’t just love us only when we’re nice. He loves us when we’re naughty too. Jesus loves the whole of us.

We wrestle long and hard in our community with what it means to live a holy life. Once in a while, someone will start thinking that holiness means that we should all strive to be SuperHuman – capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound – for the sake of Christ, of course. When that happens, fingers start wagging.

One Sunday when we were still gathering in person, someone fell asleep in church. This offended his accountability team, and they got up in his face, demanding that he make restitution for falling asleep in church. His behavior, according to his cohorts, made the whole team look bad. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say that the good news is, all this piety did not lead to any punches being thrown…a near miss.

No one asked me to weigh in on the subject, but if they had, this is what I would have said. “You know what? He was here. He wasn’t on the streets. He wasn’t in a crack house. He was sitting in church, with a group of people who have nodded off in odd places countless times. That’s what happens when people are homeless and go days without food (and use a lot of crack). He was here, in the community. He showed up. That’s a good day.”

I’m much more impressed that he showed up than concerned about whether he stayed awake. I don’t consider falling asleep in church offensive. I tend to think it is a natural response for a guy who has been fed a good meal, is sitting in a heat-filled room surrounded by folks that he is pretty confident aren’t going to beat him up or steal from him. We are privileged and yes, responsible to love the whole self of others, not just the ones who can stay awake through the sermon!

When We Have Hope...

Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.

George Weinberg

Last night I was on yet another zoom call; Dr. James Bjork from VCU was sharing his research on the brain and addiction. He talked about “gray abnormalities” in the brain and how consistently these same anomalies appear across the spectrum of mental illnesses. He tied it to other studies that showed gray matter oddities in children who display uncontrollable emotionality and frequent bad behavior. And I thought: Huh. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Is substance use disorder a symptom or THE problem? This really, really matters. And of course, it is an over-simplistic question. It ALL matters, right? Multiple problems or one problem. People who are struggling need support and help - which is most effectively provided if the problem is accurately identified AND we have a treatment protocol that works. As fascinating as the research is, it is tough to come out of that meeting without a lot of practical questions: what does this mean for MY kid? (And there is hope; it turns out research is showing that our brain has healing powers too.)

I think about all the courageous families I know who never give up as they search for answers to all manner of chronic health problems that their loved ones face. Whether it is a rare cancer diagnosis or tips on how to avoid catching the coronavirus - when we love someone, we want to support their thriving. We hope for better days and healing.

As much as I appreciate George Weinberg’s perspective on hope, I cannot agree with his premise. People, for the most part, do not abandon hope. It would be the equivalent of saying that people abandon their love for dessert or peanut butter or their favorite sports team. People do not give up on the good stuff and when we have hope, we can keep going!

I do not think we abandon hope. We get depleted. Exhaustion sets in. Compassion fatigue saps us. Frustration overwhelms us. Confusion clouds our capacity to choose a path and walk down it. We lose confidence in ourselves, others and even God. Are we weak? No! Life is hard. Tomorrow, I want to propose a cure for what ails us.