Tag Archives: discomfort

Love Is a Pain

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I escaped the anxiety epidemic, I thought. Until this year.

I didn’t admit depression. Until last year. Only after taking antidepressants did I know the truth of my years of depression.

It’s late September, and anxiety adds itself to my truth. Anxiety feels different than depression, which for me exhibits as heaviness, intense overwhelm, and anger. Instead, a growing undercurrent of angst and tension in my thoughts and feelings came as a surprise—anxiety. I feel resentful about being “the only one who cleans around here,” nervous about irritating my friends, and more grouchy than usual because the kids “never listen to me”—anxiety.

I can’t blame a change in circumstances; life carries on as usual. I have to own an internal landscape of crankiness. In my journal I write, “I’m anxious but somehow I’m not letting it rise up. I’m not connecting well with myself or others. I don’t know what to do with this inner Rubik’s Cube of mental and emotional colors. There is no ‘lining up,’ just a lot of turning and twisting and muttering. I don’t feel depressed or exhausted, just a buzz of not-okay-ness, and fretting about what other people are thinking or doing.”

When my inner world gets uncomfortable, I settle for the companionship of fear. When I settle for fear, I choose to think instead of feeling. If I think rather than feel, I’ll have an an acceptable answer for most questions. If I think rather than feel, I tell myself, I reduce the risk of rejection; I avoid confronting what I don’t understand about myself; I cannot get stuck in feelings. If I think rather than feel, I will be dependable, and that, my friends, is very important.

I fear transience of warm feelings, and permanence of cold feelings.

I fear loss of control. Not measuring up. Disappointing someone. Sigh. Doesn’t that essentially mean I live afraid of life? No wonder I feel anxious. I can’t stop the world and get off.

Now that I know I’m anxious, what’s next? There are too many options: medication or meditation, solitary confinement (okay, that’s more of a wish than a real option), exercise, more coffee or less coffee, structure or flexibility.

I’ve been through this enough times to know fixing is not the loving response. But what is? Does love sit in the feelings? Maybe the loving response is reception—not the kind with cake and punch, but the kind that’s about welcome. Could receiving feelings be different than sitting in feelings? More like open hands and less like sackcloth and ashes?

When I think about setting the emotional tone in myself and in our home, I think of zen peacefulness—wouldn’t it be lovely if I were un-ruffleable?

But love is not only the ocean’s vast calm. It also knows the waves of anger, fear, and bitterness. Is it a ship? A lighthouse? A squawking seagull? What form does love take in the steady pounding of reality?

Perhaps love is the pain of not being in control.

I know well the pain of trying to control, and the aftermath of disconnection when I succeed in control. I am less familiar with the pain of releasing control. This pain is the pain of God’s very existence; the pain of having children who have a choice.

I want to control my children. I really, really want to control them. Also, I don’t want to control them. I know it’s not love, and desperately I want to love them.

I want to feel the raw pain of love rather than the grasping anxiety of control. I want my discomfort to be worthwhile. Let me trade in an obsession with control for the wildness of not being in control. Here my soul will meet with God, inside the terrifying invitation to feel. I will feel the risks of rejection, unknowing, and transience. They accompany my choice to love, and indicate that I have chosen to feel. God is here. Let control crash and burn. Loving is enough.

Also, I will medicate, and meditate, and drink more or less caffeine.

Shout out to my friend KL for the Rubik’s Cube analogy, and to Julia Cameron for the invitation to name fears that compel me to think instead of feeling.

Yes and No meet Love

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What are the questions that freeze you inside because the socially or spiritually acceptable answer is “Yes” but your truest answer is “No”?
Can you babysit?
Will you pray for me?
Can you visit Grandma today?
Could you help me move some furniture?
May I borrow your dress? Your truck? Your sewing machine?

Maybe you don’t even know what your honest answer is, because once you feel like you have to say “Yes,” things get really tense inside and you can’t think straight.

Often I have ignored the invitation to engage with my inner dialogue, by quickly saying “Yes” and learning to live with the resentment.

As I slowly learn to be kind to myself, I sit down with my feelings more often, to hear them out. And then I let Love decide. Love is not a yes-woman. Love is as gentle with me as it is with others, and it walks me through these tense places with surprising strength and clarity.

No question has one right answer. Allow yourself to feel all the answers, and make a choice toward the wholeness of every person, including yourself.

Yes and No meet Love

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the awful feeling
of being trapped by a question:
“Will you pray for me?”
It’s the kind of question
with only one right answer.
I hate that.

Blessed are You
for this discomfort,
invitation to notice
I have separated from myself.
Yes and No at war,
fully aware that Yes will win
and No is hot with powerlessness.

Blessed are You
for the opportunity to re-unite with myself,
for Yes and No to shake hands,
the signal for Love to step forward
and make the call.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for knowing there is no right answer,
and no wrong answer—
only Love, tender and sharp,
hot lava to my glacier of fear,
lemonade to my sweating soul,
permission slip allowing the confused,
“naughty” half of myself out of detention,
joyful reunion within.

Peace and Discomfort

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Years ago I was blessed in an unnerving way by a small group Bible study that required identifying personal idols. Of course I had heard about “modern idols” all my good Christian life, but the concept had never broken into my heart’s reality. This time it pressed in until I began to be aware of some personal idols. One of the first idols I identified was comfort, or being comfortable. I do not like being uncomfortable – physically, mentally, emotionally, and everything in between. No discomfort please. Have I “given” this idol to God? Not really. I operate more on the “misery loves company” principle, and make sure everyone around me knows when I am uncomfortable. I try to fix things, and I get mad when it doesn’t work. I would say I still have comfort on a pedestal. But that doesn’t stop God from giving me something to think about.

Earlier this week as I was sitting with God in the early morning quiet, I was feeling uncomfortable. My spirit was not at peace and I wanted to escape the discomfort. As I sat with God in my discomfort, He suggested that perhaps peace and discomfort go hand in hand. His peace settled in my heart, and I felt both peaceful and uncomfortable at the same time. This has happened before, but I had not previously stopped to name it. Could peace and discomfort be two sides of the same coin in our existence on broken earth as Jesus followers? Is this a common experience among believers?

Peace with everything comfortable would hardly merit the title “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7). And being comfortable seems an unlikely description for a life lived in spiritual warfare, or being part of an upside down kingdom, or being in the process of transformation from having a heart of stone to a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). I don’t want to admit that life is uncomfortable, but the truth is that my uncomfortable moments outnumber my comfortable moments.

So if I go ahead and admit that life (even – or especially – a Christian life) is uncomfortable, discomfort suddenly has purpose. It’s like a constant whisper in my soul, “remember Jesus.” Every time I notice my cold feet, or replay a conversation that didn’t go well, or feel rejected, it’s a whisper, “remember Jesus.” I cannot forget, because I cannot make my life go well and stay comfortable. Every time I feel the discomfort, it’s an invitation to “peace that passes understanding.” An invitation to remember that the One who provides stands ready to give me peace. Only in feeling the discomfort do I know the desire for peace, and turn toward Him to receive it.

In her book “Searching for Sunday,” Rachel Held Evans says, “Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.” I love this because it rings true with the way I experience God. He is the ultimate safe Being, and in His presence I flail, I curse, I cry and shout, I sit in silent misery, I question, I complain, and always He is present. There is no person I have ever known that even came close to this level of emotional safety. And yet I am not comfortable. I don’t come before God to feel good about myself or to get things fixed. His work in me is often uncomfortable. Safe, but not comfortable. Peaceful, but not comfortable. Maybe someday I will get used to this.