Tag: control

Afternoon ramblings on Brokenness

Posted on by Niki

Life is sometimes hard.

I know you have probably been told that if you just read these books, or follow that diet or apply that mantra, you can avoid the hard, the difficult and the painful. If you can manage to get it right you will live in a utopia of joy, health and blessings. But if that doesn’t happen? Was it because you didn’t pray the right prayer or have the right amount of happy thoughts or that you didn’t project enough positivity into the universe? No. It was because in life, pain is unavoidable. No matter how much we don’t want to believe it. No matter how much we hide from it. And boy don’t we try our best to hide from it. Sometimes the sky does fall. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes shit happens.

You cannot control life as much as you can’t hold back the tide of the ocean with your hands.

How much of our theology is really about the “Kingdom” and how much is really about control? Controlling life. Controlling God. Be in control and you will avoid pain. Create your own spiritual dictatorship with you as the lord and captain of your own ship, and pain will be your footstool. Jesus was never about control. The Christianity he modeled looks more like surrender and submission and sacrifice.

I have been meditating a lot about brokenness and suffering of late. I have been thinking about all of the poor theology and ideas that I have heard from church folk about suffering. (Charismatics and Pentecostals generally tend to have a poor theology of suffering – as in we don’t really have a lot of theology around suffering. Traditionally, we like to sweep suffering and brokenness under the church carpet and try to avoid tripping over the bumps we pretend to not see)

And yet the greatest miracle of all was the brokenness and suffering of Christ. You can’t have the victory of the cross without the brokenness of the cross.

We can do better. Better than rituals for spiritual success and testimony without the process. Testimony is simply sharing where God is at work. When we leave out the hard, painful parts of the story in the name of “testimony”, are we implying that He was not at work in the process? That He is not there in the darkness?

I know that He was there, is there, because He was there at the Cross. He stepped into suffering. He embraced brokenness. His and ours.

It is a very human idea to attempt to gather power and position to avoid weakness. God chose to reveal His power through laying aside His privilege and choosing weakness. It’s not the lion and the lamb. The lion is the lamb.

God is constantly messing with our theology. Challenging our view of Him.

I have a limited understanding when it comes to a theology of brokenness and suffering. I am still trying to get my head and heart around it. Baby steps. What I do know is that our overzealous theology of victory, an overly optimistic view of the end-times and marching up those good ole seven mountains; holds very little relevance to the boy who has just lost a mother, to the man wrestling with mental illness, to the little girl raped daily for money, to the women trapped in addiction.

Ann Voscamp states in The Broken Way “Love isn’t about feeling good about others; love is ultimately being willing to suffer for others.” Love’s intention is to direct our gaze low to the broken, the hurting, the stumbling, the outcast. Christ says that when we care for the least of these, we care for Him. How ironic that sometimes we miss seeing Christ because we thought we should be looking high when in fact he was hidden in the low places.

I am not convinced that a theology that is over focused on might and power and victory is the answer the world is looking for, but then neither are they looking for a theology of lethargic apathy. There must be a balance; a balance of faith in the midst of brokenness and hope in the depth of suffering. Maybe one day I’ll get there.

 

Dancing in the Rain

Posted on by Niki

Life has its ups and downs. We all know this to be true. But what do we do when life is more down than up? What do we do in that moment when there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution? In that moment the epiphanies don’t come and the broken doesn’t get mended. We could spend more time processing our feelings. We could process ourselves mad.

Sometimes the clouds roll in and they hide the sun. Sometimes it rains. There are times to take shelter from the rain. To put up your umbrella and find somewhere dry to ride it out.

When life is especially difficult and the pain is very real, that is when we are least willing to let go. We feel safer if we just hold on tighter. Letting go feels completely illogical and dangerous. Why would someone recommend endangering ourselves like that? Letting go. Please. So, even with our fingers hurting, we tighten our grip and withdraw further. You can’t touch me. I won’t let you take what little I have left.

 When your life is more like a thunderstorm than a sunny day, sometimes all that is left to do is raise your head to the sky and laugh. To twirl around in the raindrops, letting life pulsate back through your limbs. Let yourself feel alive and free even just for a moment. Sometimes the only thing left to do is to dance in the rain. It is a completely illogical response to the situation. Which can make it such a powerful act of warfare. Your enemy has no strategy in place for your seemingly out of place reaction. When you surrender to hope and to joy and to celebration, even in the midst of the storm.

How does one do that? How does that work? What does that even look like?

I am still trying to understand it myself, what it looks like to dance in the rain.

 

The F Word Series – Feelings

Posted on by Niki

Feelings. We all have them. But we don’t necessarily always want them. Some feelings are somewhat taboo to experience, let alone talk about. We’ve become kind of feelings phobic as a society.They don’t usually make for happy dinner party conversation or chats around  the water cooler at work.  Or should I say unpleasant feelings? There too many books and seminars about the power of positivity and how to be happy in 5 simple steps. A lot of us don’t know how to process our feelings because we were never taught that it was a good thing to do. Particularly those somewhat unpleasant feelings.

There is no such thing as “negative” feelings.

Feelings are simply our heart’s way of communicating that something has happened. Often our attitude towards our feelings can be more damaging than the actual feelings themselves. And having bad feelings doesn’t make you a bad person. Acting on these feelings in an unhealthy way is wrong, not the feelings themselves. You are allowed to feel angry. That is not wrong. But to go up to some one and punch them in the face. That is wrong.

Therapist Tina Gilbertson in her book, Constructive Wallowing, speaks of the natural life cycle of a feeling. Each of our feelings is supposed to take root, grow, bloom, and then wither, eventually disappearing altogether – until the next one comes along.

She talks about how a feeling comes, you feel it and then it leaves. If you don’t allow yourself to experience the feeling, you are halting the natural process. Instead of moving on, the feeling stays. You end up stockpiling these feelings. Every time a new similar feeling arrives it triggers the pile of feelings that you held onto, thus the reason for many of our meltdowns, shutdowns and explosions.

I know it can be difficult to grasp that feelings in themselves are not negative. Especially for those of us who have wrestled with emotion disorders where unpleasant feelings can feel overwhelming, like drowning. How could I tell someone who is drowning to keep treading water? Some emotions are the result of physiological issues. The catch is that at times the physiological issues are caused by emotions that haven’t been dealt with. I have recently been to the doctor and am going to see a naturopath to check on the physiological issues that could be leading to my anxiety issues and other emotional craziness that I have been struggling with lately. You see, if my posts are intense that’s because I am an intensely emotional person. Writing is my catharsis. There are times to process your feelings alone in your journal. But then there are times to seek out expert assistance. 

I usually try to keep tight control over the display of my emotions. I am afraid of what people may think, or so that is what I have always told myself. I am especially afraid to display anger. The truth is that I am afraid of my anger. I am afraid of the damage I could do. There is power in the words we speak. There is power to heal and power to hurt. I am afraid of exploding. I am afraid to hurt. Although there have been times when I have fantasized about what it would be like to really hurt someone who hurt me. Imagining if I had had the perfect cruel comeback to cut that person down to size. Terrible I know. But I will expose myself to show you that you are really not alone.

We need to know how to let go of our feelings. Letting go is not ignoring. It’s not pretending the feelings aren’t real.

Letting go requires allowing ourselves to experience our feelings in a safe and healthy way.

Some of us have trouble with feeling sad or angry. Some of us are even more afraid to allow ourselves to feel happy or hopeful.

There can be an incredible vulnerability in allowing oneself to experience these positive emotions. Emotions like blissful joy and unfettered hope. What if you surrender to hope and joy and then it all comes crashing down around you? That would hurt. Disappointment hurts. But so does regret. So much of our lives are spent avoiding pain. It never occurs to us that our pain avoidance could lead to pain in other ways.

I don’t have a lot of great advice for you. This journey is one I am on as well. Choosing to embrace our feelings in a healthy way is a difficult skill to master. Skill. That’s the key word. It takes time. It takes practice. Be kind to yourself as you learn. We are all learners here.