We all have good parts of our lives: fun events, good friends, adventures, trying new experiences. We all have bad parts too – deaths of people we love, arguments that end relationships, work disappointments.
In my life, I have had some amazing experiences and some really low lows.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed that something seemed to be broken with how I experienced the good in my life. Even really great things, I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t really notice until I could experience them normally again, but it was like I went numb. I would notice that I couldn’t taste my favorite food, or a delicious cigar…and I would wonder, what is going on?
I realized, some good things are so Big Good that it’s actually hard for me to process them. I get scared…and then I hide from the good. This is super annoying actually, and double bad, because it prevents me from both enjoying the good and also being thankful for the good.
The box on the lower left is happy, if upside down.
A pet peeve of mine (Josh) is messy garages. I was ranting about this to Laine the other day, and an epiphany hit me.
Souls are like garages. Keep yours cleaned the f&$# out.
We are not naturally highly organized people. This is not a rant/post proposing that you itemize, alphabetize, and categorize every one of your possessions, towards living a better life. This is not that kind of post.
At least this person made an alley through their stuff…
However, your garage is made for a specific purpose. We both live in Michigan. It gets cold here. If you have to park your car on the street, or in your driveway, your car gets covered in frost that has to be scraped off with one of the most annoying tools ever created. It also gets covered in snow when it inevitably snows, and regardless of snow or frost, it’s cold in the mornings.
Your driveway is also the safest place for your friends and buddies to park when they come visit you – but if you have to park in the driveway, they have to park in the street.
If you park in a garage, if you use the garage for its intended purpose, you avoid all of this pain.
Garages are for parking. They shouldn’t be filled with cruft and detritus that you don’t need, you haven’t used in years, and you have no real plans to even think about.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11
The Bible talks about sacrifice a lot. Sacrificing for each other, sacrificing to serve God. The Gospel, the most important story arc in the Bible, is in part about Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice – his death, yes, but more his complete and utter separation from God when he needed God the most. Unfortunately, over the past 2000 years, the definition of sacrifice has been broken to the point where it’s used to do more harm than good.
There’s a relatively simple list of things that most people want. We want to feel important to our world. We want to be good, kind people – people who aren’t the bad guy, people who deserve good.
We want the freedom to choose what makes us happy, and to find things that make us feel fulfilled. We want to be able to choose the things that fill our souls to the brim.
Conflict
But the people around us don’t always want those things for us. They want us to work in their best interests, and they sometimes get hurt when we instead do what we want or need. When they get hurt, they try to control us into changing. They try to make us feel bad (or good) until we do change, until we do things that don’t make us happy or things that will hurt us – and if that doesn’t work, they decide that we must be an enemy and they begin to treat us accordingly.
Resolution
False Realities
I (Josh) didn’t like reality. Reality kept showing me that people may not always react favorably to the things I want or need – and I was scared of what might happen if I continued to fight for my right to those things. Ultimately, I was scared that they might leave if I continued to take care of myself.
I didn’t value my own soul enough to believe that it was worth taking care of, except…I kind of did. So in response, as a way to feel justified in fighting for my soul, I created alternate versions of people. I made people into monsters – monsters who manipulated me for their own selfish purposes. I saw them as willing to destroy me in order to get what they wanted. And since they were evil, I didn’t have to do what they said – I had the right to take care of myself, and I also had the right to control them into being not evil.
False Realities Believe in the Right to Protect Myself
Some of these people were not trying to manipulate me. I would see people as evil who were just trying to help me face my fears – deeply hidden, pressed down, and blocked away – and I would see people as evil who would shove me at God when I didn’t want to do that.
But…some of the people I turned into monsters were trying to manipulate me.These people weren’t evil though, they were just…afraid. They were afraid of the same thing I was, actually, that if they couldn’t control me or our relationship, I would leave. In their fear, they were trying to destroy me, but sort of as a…byproduct. They tried to destroy me to make me safe for them to love.
What I struggled with was the simple fact that I’m supposed to do what protects my soul, what nourishes and cares for it, and what keeps it whole so that it can serve God to the best of its ability. I don’t actually need to see evil motives in other people in order to do so.
I don’t need to see evil motives in other people in order to protect my soul.
Three Realities
“Hopeless.”
I realized that I believed in at least three realities:
the utopia, a perfect place, without fear or risk, that I had long ago lost all hope of getting to. I was angry at God, because I assumed he was choosing to keep me away- so really it was his fault that I couldn’t get there.
the horror, where the people I loved were evil and trying to destroy me, and where nothing would ever ever be good – where not even God could fix things.
actual reality, where things were mostly good, but not my previous understanding of ideal.
If life was intended to be the utopia, then I had seriously messed something up at some point, despite always trying as hard I could to do and be what God wanted from me. If life was the horror, I thought I could (and should) seize control from God and set my own destiny – but it turns out that seizing control from God never works. I tried, and tried, and tried with all my soul and strength to take control and make the horror world less awful. It was a terrible process, but I realized, eventually, that it was impossible. Also, thankfully, that it wasn’t even reality.
That left only actual reality – and if actual reality was all that was available for me to work with, I was really scared that my life would never be what I wanted it to be.
Oh good, not just me then…
We realized that other people do this too – we saw it happening, we had it happen to us as the objects, and we were confused and hurt when people saw us as demons or monsters out to destroy them. But…then we realized that these people were just really scared. They wanted to control us into doing the things that would make them feel less scared – which we weren’t willing to do. The inability to control us made them more scared, which led to more attempts at control, and…
Scared people do crazy things.
It gave us a lot of new empathy actually. We realized that most of the people who ever did a bad thing to another person…they probably just created a false reality. Every mugger was just keeping himself fed and giving himself the life he deserved – it was only fair, only what he deserved from the people and world around him. Every despot was just preserving freedom or safety for his people – whatever meager amount could be eked out from this cold, dark world. “Because even meager safety in my kingdom is better than the horror of living under their regime.”
At this point, we’re pretty sure that even truly evil people create their own moral justification via false realities. Hitler believed in what he was doing so hard that he convinced thousands of people that he was right – his opinions were awful, and fueled by fear. But he was convincing. He was sure.
Scared people do crazy things.
What’s the answer?
What’s always the answer?
Faith. Trust.
I had to learn all over again how to trust. I had to trust that God loves me – and while he disciplines, he does not punish. I have already been forgiven, so…there isn’t anything to punish.
I had to be willing to see the people I loved, which I had been avoiding in case I was about to see them walk away from me. Once I saw them, I knew that they were not trying to destroy me – or if they were, I didn’t have to let them.
Once I could trust God, and remember that he loves me and wasn’t trying to punish me, it was clear(er) that the utopia probably didn’t exist. And once I could see the people I loved again, and I trusted that they were not trying to destroy me, it was clear(er) that the horror probably didn’t exist either. That left learning how to exist in actual reality, which…is an entirely other blog post.
Fear is really hard to deal with. Fight or flight is an inherent human truth – we think that if we’re afraid, we must act. But…most of the time, action in the context of fear doesn’t make a ton of sense. It’s very logical in the comparatively rare times that our lives are actually in danger – but in the times we are simply (ha) afraid that we will lose an important relationship, action spurred by fear usually just does a whole lot of damage.
Come, all you weary.
Come, gather ’round near me,
find rest for your soul.
– Thrice, Come All You Weary
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
One of the things that’s been a struggle for both of us, individually and as friends, is how do we make sure people will stick around?We all, at our core, don’t want to be alone. We want to be known, and appreciated, and maybe truly loved, but that…sure seems like a lot to ask. Most of us only manage to shoot for being a little bit known and sort of vaguely liked. And that’s actually pretty great, if it happens.
“It works as long as you’re the smartest, but then the curtain comes back. Nobody likes being manipulated.”
People hate that word, “manipulation.” As a rule, they don’t hate the concept unless they’re on the receiving end of it, and even then sometimes they appear to prefer it to dealing with…well, reality.
As leaders, our job is to enable the people we lead to make good decisions. The primary way that we can do that is to give them the clarity they need to make those decisions.
If we don’t give our people the information they may need to make the best decision for them, we have failed them as leaders.
You think you have control. You look around and take stock of your life, and, if it’s a good day, you high-five yourself and feel some measure of peace at how well you’re doing with…stuff. And also things. “My stuff and also my things are right on track!” you say to yourself, proud and pleased. If it’s a bad day, you beat yourself up and you tell yourself to get your act together, and to take control of your life.
But…unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, because we would all be awful at it), you don’t have control. Not really. At most, you have control over yourself and your choices and…even that, let’s face it, isn’t complete control.
Can you safeguard your breath, in the night while you sleep,
keep your heart beating steady and sure?
Control only belongs to God, and when people try to wrestle that away from him, it…doesn’t go great. Most of the time, we think other people are in control, and so we spend our time trying to wrestle control from each other. It…also doesn’t go great.
Come, all you weary.