What If?

People who are always gentle with themselves probably do not need to think about all the ways that rumination, regret and remorse mess us up. So you guys can go have a nice day and stop reading right here! For the rest of us, the insecure, the sensitive, the perpetually anxious and often plagued with guilt peeps, who are alway berating ourselves with the WHAT IF’s? - I have a phrase for you, here goes: When we know better we do better.

I'm not suggesting that this little phrase serves as some kind of magical solution to all our feelings of guilt and shame. But what I am suggesting is this: we often get in a habit loop of thinking, feeling and doing. When it becomes just circular suffering without anything changing, we need to break up the band and find a new way to live.

So here's what we do. We notice ourselves falling into the trap of feeling perpetual guilt, we realize that this is more habit than factual reality (because if we are legitimately guilty then our work is to ask forgiveness and make amends), and we need to discipline ourselves to break the habit loop.

Here's my example: As my mother died, my daughter was giving birth. I rushed from my mom's bedside to be present for my grandson's birth - a ten hour drive. My father found this reprehensible; who ever wants to disappoint their daddy? But my mind knew that I had done all I could for my mom, and now I needed to be there for my daughter. I spent years dealing with a whole range of emotions. But healing began on the day that I made my two lists, and I was supported by people who loved me in saying, when we know better we do better. Anytime I found myself ruminating and rummaging around looking for alternative choices for a past I could not change, I said to myself: "This is not productive; this is not helpful. When I know better, I do better. I am doing better by refusing to ruminate, second guess and feel guilty about something I can not change...and would not change if I had to make the same choice right now." Let me be clear. What I had to accept, what I had to get better at doing, was this: not allowing other people to decide what I should or should not do, how I should or should not feel. I believe I made the choice my mother would have approved of - go home once all has been done, and do the next right thing. Celebrate a new baby even as you mourn the loss of the woman who loved babies more than ice cream. But if this sounds easy, then I am a poor communicator. It was not and it is not easy. But this is what a commitment to growing up requires - doing. hard things.

Listening to Your Thinking Center

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

Early on during the pandemic we devoured all the news we could find on the subject. We had decisions to make as a family and as a faith community. The pressure to do the safest thing was tempered by our belief that isolation is bad for people - especially people who are struggling. The more we studied, the more confusing the process.

One morning Pete had a panic attack; I had not slept in days. We stopped and THOUGHT about our situation. Too much information was causing more harm than good. So we stopped the obsessive watching and chose to limit our exposure. This has worked for us.

This is an example of the three centers of intelligence working at various times together and in competition. Our feelings were teaching us that we were overloaded, but our research and compulsion news consumption was “doing” out of control. We were not thinking, we were ruminating. FINALLY, our thinking center came online and called a moratorium on our doing so that our feelings could calm down a bit.

This is the value of our thinking center. It helps us establish guidelines that govern our lives. It contains new ideas (hey, stop watching all the news and watch just enough to stay informed), original thinking (what about zoom?), vision (this is not our future, it is our present), awareness (what good are we doing like this?), and understanding of the true meaning of reality (this is a historic moment, no one knows for sure what is right). The best gift our thinking offers is the capacity for consciousness.

Lots of time we believe we are thinking when we are really imagining, or ruminating, or obsessing. So, as the scriptures encouraged so many years ago - we have to take captive every thought and give it a good vetting to make sure we are really doing productive work at establishing guidelines that govern our lives.

Some of us are too heady, others could use a bit more thinking. Which are you?

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

Thinking, Feeling, Doing

A couple days ago I mentioned three concrete areas where love is lived out:  how we relate to ourselves, our closest companions and our community. These are three very different arenas of loving.  Although the overarching principles of love apply, the specifics are dependent on the circumstance. Here is the general principle as stated by Jesus:

34 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had left the Sadducees speechless, they met together. 35 One of them, a legal expert, tested him. 36 “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. 38  This is the first and greatest commandment. 39  And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. 40  All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”  

~ Matthew 22:34-40 CEB

During basketball season this past year Pete and I had the good fortune of attending the University of Richmond versus Virginia Commonwealth University basketball game on the University of Richmond campus.  It was a good game, seeing as how our dog wasn’t in the fight. If you were a VCU fan, you loved the first half but for those U of R Spiders, they loved the last second victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.  As mostly objective observers who have reasons to love both teams we were able to nonjudgmentally observe the crowd around us.

It was...interesting.  People did not always behave in a manner consistent with their ages.  This was a social setting, and as such, I would suggest that fan behavior might have been modified with this fact in mind.  Love is like this. In the privacy of one’s own home, love might look like tolerating the insane behavior of a rabid fan. To accommodate this very issue I lovingly removed the ceiling fan in our den after Pete jumped up and hit his head on it one times too many to stay healthy; I considered it a McBean family concussion prevention measure.  Love in the social setting, especially when you are the rival or you as the home team fan notice that rival fans are sitting in front of you, might mean toning it down or at least not acting like a fool. The game isn’t over until it is over. Raucous jeering of the opponent too soon is just plain unsafe. Problem numero uno: loving others well is venue dependent.  We have missed this distinction at times, resulting in poor outcomes.

That being said, if we practice the principle of treating all people with respect, we can avoid a lot of issues regardless of the venue.  I know that sports loyalty runs wide and deep for many. But a spiritual life requires a constant reflection on what runs THE MOST DEEP within us.  What are our core values? For people of faith, Jesus has stated the top two. We must wrestle with what this looks like in all venues, all the time, even at sporting events. What about you?  Is there a particular “venue” where you struggle? Respecting yourself? Your intimate relationships? Getting along in a group?