On this day Brigham Young looked over a barren desert valley declared that “This Is The Place,” the pioneers would settle and build a home. No matter where we find ourselves or how long we stay there, making a commitment to nest and make it home matters.
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This Christmas, consider the gift of peace that Christ has given us. The Sawi tribe in Papa New Guinea has a tradition called “The Peace Child.” Find out what meaning this might offer you this season.
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Most of us feel broken in some way–we feel unworthy or unappealing or less lovable because we less than our own ideal in some way. For some it is being overweight, or not having the financial means to have the home or clothes they’d love. For some it might be feeling like they just can’t stay on top of their home, they yell at their children, they can’t perform to the extent they’d like at work, or are doubting their faith. More substantial struggles like losing someone we love, divorce, infertility, abuse, trauma, or having a significant health challenge can all be things that can cause us to question our own wholeness. Ironically it is our brokenness that allows us to come to true wholeness. God loves broken things–it is what allows him to heal us.
I saw my husband’s elbow brush the edge of my favorite Talavera plate hanging on our bedroom wall, but it crashed to the floor before a warning escaped my throat. The bright ceramic colors were strewn across the floor—some large, others tiny fragments. There were too many pieces—it seemed impossible to put back together. The plate was gone. My husband felt terrible. We scooped it up and the pile of shards sat on my desk for several days. I kept looking at it. I considered tossing it. I noticed the empty plate holder; the room seemed a little duller without it. And the days went on. One day, I pulled out the ceramic glue and tried to piece back together some of the larger pieces but there were cracks and chipped fragments. I left it for a while to think about if I even wanted it anymore, it just wasn’t the same.
There is something about us that doesn’t like broken things, we resist them. Things that are broken seem less useful, unworthy and less appealing. Why is that? Breaking is a powerful metaphor. People break, relationships break. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. When we feel broken, the natural response is to ignore it, to fix it, or to hide it.
When my mother called me to tell me she had been diagnosed with stage four Ovarian Cancer, her first words to me were, “We’re not cancer people.” She refused to be broken. She underwent surgery, chemo, remission, lots of natural healing methods and chemo again. In the in-between she undulated between gut wrenching sickness, longing to live to finish raising her family.
Of course, she did what any of us would do—fight to stay alive. With her characteristic optimism and quest for knowledge, she was constantly on the lookout for new healing protocols. We loved her for it, and cheered her on. Her work and discipline was inspiring, I believe trying new things gave her hope too. She would often tell us her tremendous hope that a particular method would be successful.
We rode the waves of hope and disappointment as she tried various methods. While I unfairly depended on her for her reassurance, there was always an underlying anxiety. I was never quite sure how she really felt or what would happen “if” the new idea or protocol didn’t pan out.
As her health declined, her search for healing became all consuming. This was understandable and certainly what any of us might be inclined to do. It took most of the day each day to scan the internet for new alternative healing methods, to make all fresh foods and do a variety of protocols with exercise, heat etc. It was a time of grasping at anything to try to get more time.
We wanted her around for more time–but I confess that selfishly at times I longed for her to stop trying to get more time, and admit she might not have much time left. I wished she would use the little time she had left to focus more on spending time with me and with her family and friends. That was the time we knew we DID have. I remember changing our flight plans to be with her at Thanksgiving right after her diagnosis and she insisted we not come—saying “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” When I tried to record some of her stories about her life, she resisted. It felt to her like admitting defeat. This was absolutely understandable, and I would probably do the same thing in her shoes. However it was interesting to be on the opposite side. As much as we wanted her to keep trying things to keep living, sometimes resisting the cancer meant separating herself from spending time with her loved ones and writing down her experiences.
There were times she did accept her cancer and let us be part of her world. A few of my favorite were when she took us wig shopping with her and we all tried on ridiculous wigs and giggled at how silly we looked. One time she got wigs for every member of our family and we all did a photo shoot together. She let me come with her to get a hair cut when she knew her hair was about to fall out, and let me cry with her as she had to cut off the hair cut she had recently grown out. She let me make her mashed up sweet potatoes to help her nausea during chemo–there was something sweet about getting to serve my mother who had always served me. Another thing I loved was to hear her insights from the amazing things she was learning. She read a stack of cancer books taller than she was. She was overflowing with interesting perspectives on faith, healing, nutrition, health and so many other things.
Certainly learning how to deal with a terminal illness was a learning experience for all of us. Perhaps the most difficult was when she wouldn’t tell us what was happening with her health. I believe she did this to protect us–so that we would not feel the depth of worry and heartbreak she had to feel. I love her for this. However, ironically the more it was unspoken, the more anxiety I felt. When I would call on a bad day, she usually wouldn’t answer the phone. It was often several days of silence until she’d come to a better place and then she’d tell me how low she was and how much better she was now. In the interum I worried, and wondered what was happening. I hated not being able to love her and listen to her when she felt most broken. She seemed to only be able to be broken in hindsight—it was too vulnerable to be broken in the moment. Having never been through this but having watched her, I can imagine there were days she simply couldn’t talk. She felt too sick or was too emotionally low to share. This was a new and terrifying journey. She was doing the best she could and the best she knew how. Still, I wonder how it could have been sometimes if I could have accompanied her more on the difficult paths of her journey–particularly in the earlier phases of her cancer.
She did break. Not all at once, but slowly.
The summer before she passed away, she had a paradigm shift. She had asked a fellow cancer survivor for her book list on cancer cures at a yoga class one day. Her friend refused; she lovingly put her arm around my mother and spoke words that echoed through her heart. “You are in a frantic frenzy. You need to stand still and let God.”
My mother did. She had a profound realization of her anxiety or resistance against being broken. With tremendous courage, she made a deliberate decision to stop “fixing” and stop “hiding.” She stopped scanning the internet for solutions. She stopped following every undulation of her blood tests. She accepted that she was sick but decided to stop panicking about healing and instead feel peace in the time she had left. She did do a few things to keep up her health, but it did not consume her. As she relaxed and accepted her “brokenness,” she began to feel tremendous personal peace. She knew Christ was the ultimate healer.
Peace began to permeate our family as well. Her own peace was contagious. Knowing she was at peace, allowed me and my siblings to relax and connect with her in a new and deeper way. When we visited she cleared the calendar and chatted, laughed, shared, and sat. She had tea parties with my daughters in the backyard, she ate more chocolate, and we laughed while we watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs together. She called all of her children more often and took all of us and her grandchildren on a family history tour of St. George, UT that summer. She wove into our stories our grandparents’ stories. She even compiled all our family recipes for each of us–a way of acknowledging she may not be here to give them to us in the future. These actions were so different than a year or two before. These are some of my most cherished memories of her. After this paradigm shift, she seemed willing to share more of her difficult times as well. This allowed us to be part of her journey. Though it was difficult sometimes to hear of her struggles, there was much less anxiety and so much love as we got to accompany her.
Just a few months later, the cancer returned and spread throughout her body. This time she surrendered; she knew she was broken. This time it was not “fixable.” But interestingly she continued to feel hope. It was not hope in a new protocol, a new diet, or vitamin. It was a deeper hope—a hope in Christ. As she deliberately chose to set aside the anxiety and stop resisting, God was able to heal her spirit. I distinctly remember a phone conversation we had in which I asked her if she thought it was her time to die. She said she thought it may be. She told me that while she wanted to stay and be part of my life and each of my sibling’s lives, she felt at peace that it was her time and that she was at peace with God.
I was living in China at the time, and I received an emergency call one Saturday morning that she may only have a few days to live. I frantically boarded a plane and sobbed all the way to Colorado hoping to be able to hug her one last time and tell her I loved her. I was privileged to get to hold her hand and be with her the last few days before she passed away. She was in tremendous pain. She didn’t try to resist it–she accepted it. It was almost as if she had to labor to get out of this world, just as mother’s labor to bring children into the world.
One day my Aunt Nanny and I laid by her and asked her how she was feeling. Her response was, “I am feeling great peace.” In her willingness to let her body break, God could finally heal her heart and give her true hope. Her acceptance gave us all the peace and courage we would need to deal with her passing.
When she did finally pass away, we all knelt around her bed and watched her as her breathing slowed and finally stopped. It was a sacred and beautiful experience largely because she had accepted her own brokenness. Having her gone, meant that I felt “broken”. For a long time I felt that it defined me in some ways, to have lost my mother. I have had to learn how to be “broken” and beautiful in my own way. See Hope is The Thing: Getting Through Grief. After all, God loves broken things. It is what allows him to heal us.
Brokenness isn’t something to fear, we are all broken in some way. We have broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, these are the raw material of hope. When we resist our brokenness…try to hide it, fight against it, and try to prove we are not broken–it gives our brokenness power over us. God loves broken things. As we surrender our brokenness to him and accept our brokenness ourselves, He gives us hope and peace through his grace. He mends us. Sometimes the mending looks different than we expected. But it is always more beautiful than we anticipated. Our brokenness is a gift.
I think I will keep my cracked Talavera plate. It reminds me that brokenness is beautiful—it’s what spurs us to change and grow. It is what allows God to heal us. The new wholeness is stronger and more powerful than it was in the first place, because now there is a story of pain and picking up the pieces and creating something new…something even stronger and even more beautiful.
When have you felt broken?
What if you owned your brokenness instead of resisting it? Have you allowed others to see it? Have you asked others for help? If you could rebuild, what would you do?
I love this new song by Calee Reed called “Broken and Beautiful.” It expresses a similar idea.
We spend a lot of our time as human beings trying to escape or ignore or change these types of feelings. Why? Because they feel awful! No one likes feeling fear, or feeling stressed, overwhelmed, afraid, embarrassed, or depressed. The problem is that when we avoid negative emotions they stay around longer, get more intense and rarely address the takes up lots of brain space! There is a better way to handle difficult emotions.
Our brains and bodies are programmed with these feelings to move us to action. If a truck is headed straight for us, we feel fear. And, our fear drives us to move out of the way. If we have too many things required of us, we feel overwhelm. This feeling drives us to eliminate the unessential.
However, in our modern world, it’s easy to feel that we SHOULD feel happy or peaceful all the time. We think if we feel something negative, we should fix it. We have so many easy options for escape!
When our to-do list feels too long, we can turn on Netflix and get lost in a show instead. When dinner our is crazy, we eat a cookie on the counter to dull the overwhelm and get a hit of joy—even temporarily. After a difficult conversation that didn’t go well, we can drown our guilt and disappointment by pushing a few buttons on Amazon and a box shows up on our door with a new pair of shoes.
Everyone has different emotions they try to avoid, and there are myriad methods of avoiding them; eating, shopping, TV, staying busy, anger, withdrawing, sleeping, alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, working etc. When we avoid emotions, we never process them. They continue to cause us problems. And, the things we do to avoid negative emotions cause us trouble sometimes too.
There are 3 problems with trying to escape emotions:
Here is an example: There was a time in my life when I felt so overwhelmed and discouraged I listened to audiobooks all the time—especially at dinner time and crazy times in the car. It seemed like a benign enough escape. I knew it wasn’t ideal for my family but I wasn’t sure how else to deal with the chaos without becoming a person I didn’t like. I checked out. While it saved my kids a lot of yelling, my escape also robbed me of precious time and interactions with my kids.
Emotions are simply chemicals in our body. Their job is to alert us of something important and move us to action if necessary. If they are not allowed to complete their job, they continue to resurface. Sometimes the emotion itself rises up again and again and other times it shows up in different ways.
It’s sort of like those windup music boxes where you turn the crank and the ballerina dances to music. If you keep the box open, eventually she will stop. But, if you shut the box, she stops. However, every time the box is opened she dances and the music plays. It may take many times of opening and closing to finish the cycle. That is how our emotions work too.
I had a baby just a few weeks after my mother passed away. I wanted to grieve my mother’s loss—she was a tremendous presence in my life. However, I was busy around the clock taking care of a newborn, an emotional toddler, and a needy pre-schooler. We were in the middle of an international move and I didn’t know how to grieve in the midst of the insanity! So I just closed the metaphorical music box (unconsciously of course) and kept trying to survive.
Over the next few years however, when strong emotions surfaced, my grief was often right there. Our move to a foreign country was overwhelming and difficult and I found myself sobbing nightly. (I had moved to other countries before and been fine. But this time I was totally lost.) I thought it was the move itself—but looking back I see it was that grief resurfacing. My grief resurfaced again and again as difficult things emerged in my life. The ballerina had to play her part.
Recently I was trying to concentrate on something and my daughter was whistling. It was really grating on me. I tried to ignore it, but the harder I tried to not be bothered by it, the more intense the irritation began to be. In fact, it was requiring so much effort to “ignore” it, I hardly had any brain space left for the work I was doing. This happens with emotions too—when we are angry at someone or irritated and we keep trying to push it down, it often consumes us even when we don’t realize it.
There is a better way to deal with emotions.
Most people think that if they allow their emotion they will end up doing something they don’t want to do—like yell at their kids, or eat too many cookies, or sleep until 10 in the morning. However, allowing a feeling is different than acting on it. Allowing a feeling just means that we feel it, we notice it, we don’t avoid it. It doesn’t mean we act on it. In fact, allowing an emotion actually allows the emotion to dissipate, so we are less likely to re-act to it.
Emotions are just chemicals in our body. When we feel them, they are simply moving around inside of us. The emotion itself won’t hurt us. This is a powerful piece of knowledge. When you know that you can handle any emotion, you stop feeling afraid of certain emotions and you don’t have to spend as much time avoiding negative emotions.
Our bodies need food to survive. When we eat food, the body metabolizes it–breaks it down, absorbs it and sends it out to the body for fuel. Similarly, emotions are essential to our survival. They provide the necessary impetus to eat, live, reproduce, find purpose and even get out of bed in the morning. When our body encounters an emotion, it’s crucial to metabolize it just as it would food. It’s important for the emotion to be allowed to run it’s course, be identified and serve as fuel for the appropriate action.
Become an observer of yourself. When you notice yourself feeling a negative emotion like fear, stress, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, shame etc. don’t shove it down or numb it away by distracting yourself. Instead, close your eyes and “watch” the emotion in your body for a minute.
It seems like just when I start to chat with another adult one of my girls decides they need something. They are often pulling on my arm or nagging, “mom, mom, mom, mom….can we go?”. My two-year old often just lays down and howls. Even after I’ve let them know we will be leaving in 5 min. they continue to pester me. I often feel irritated! Here’s how I process this emotion.
I say to myself “This is irritation.”
Imagine that you were going to describe to someone what it feels like to feel a particular emotion. You’d describe where you felt it in the body, what the sensation was like, what color it was, if it was hot or cold etc.I say, “I’m feeling really irritated right now. I feel tension in my eyebrows, my lower jaw feels tingly, and my lungs feel a little short of air. To me irritation is a warm emotion—I picture it as orange goop sort of slowly building up in my lungs.
Remember it is just a chemical in your body, it can’t hurt you! Many people worry that if you allow emotion to hang out, it will cause you to act on it. Don’t act on it (acting is an escape too.) Just feel it.
I say to myself. “This is fine. This is just irritation. I can just be a person who is irritated. I’m going to calmly continue my conversation, and it’s okay if my kids fall apart for a few minutes. I don’t have to get angry at them. Each time I just observe my irritation and don’t act on it, it becomes less intense.”
Of course my brain wants to sell me all sorts of ideas. “My kids are so disrespectful.” “They know better.” “Uh, this always happens.” The more these ideas creep in, the more irritated I feel. I just try to go back to noticing the emotion. At first it seems to become the most important thing in that moment! I can hardly think of anything else. However, the more I allow it (and refuse to act on the emotion) it gets less and less intense. It slowly starts to go away. Soon I’ve forgotten all about it.
And it will! But each time it comes back, it will be less and less intense.
By this time, I’m likely walking to the car since I had told my kids it would only be five minutes. However once everyone is back in the car, my brain loves to remind me of the irritating moment we just had. When the thoughts start again, the emotion starts again. Back to step 1. But each time I allow the feeling until it dissipates.
Our emotions are just chemicals in our body. They won’t hurt us and there’s nothing to fear. If we try to ignore them or escape them we end up with a lot more trouble than the original emotion created in the first place. Simply acknowledging and being willing to feel the emotion, allows it to pass. What would your life be like if you weren’t afraid of feeling any emotion?
What negative feelings do you fear most?
What do you do to avoid them?
Next time you notice a negative emotion try these steps:
1. Name the emotion
2. Describe it
3. Allow it to hang out
4. Continue till it dissipates
5. Allow the emotion to hang out each time it re-surfaces