Over the last few lessons, I’ve been sharing how discouraging the summer was for me. What’s fascinating is as time goes by, as I share the stories, and as I follow the tools I’ve taught for dealing with discouragement (i.e. recognizing how others can have it worse and making and focusing on a list of blessed experiences you’ve had in your life while looking at the difficult situations with humor, logic, and considering what you can learn from them) I’m feeling better about everything; the summer doesn’t seem as discouraging. It’s now a time that gave me some stories and new insights. What’s even crazier is after spending over four years complaining about the nightmare addition we struggled through, it’s only been eight months since we finished and somehow, I’m looking at a fixer upper house near my home thinking, “Maybe I should buy that as a side project.” Am I insane? When we first bought our house, we had to gut it and redo everything and shortly after that, we finished the basement. Both experiences were awful. How can my brain even remotely contemplate this unnecessary option? It’s like a bad addiction: “It wasn’t that bad when I did it” – yes, it was. What’s actually insane is this is normal. It’s like how a woman goes through the pains of childbirth, and might even exclaim: “I’m never doing that again!” but not even a year later, she’s saying, “It wasn’t that bad. I want another.” How is that possible? Enduring a storm can be awful, but when the dust settles, if we can see how it benefited us, we can be open to doing it again. This is why many couples who break up, end up trying to make it work again. This can work if both sides have actually worked on themselves and grown, but if the break up is more of a pause in the fighting, the relationship is doomed. If nothing changes, you end up in the position of saying, “Oh, right; that’s why we broke up; you suck.”
Distance from the original emotion can even lead to compassion. In the last lesson, I shared about my incredibly discouraging experience meeting Mel Gibson. What was interesting was because of that meeting I found myself praying for him – that was a new response for me. Considering praying for people who hurt or disappoint you is a key teaching of Jesus, I probably should’ve tried it before, but better late than later.
Several days after I met Gibson, there was an article in the newspaper that stated he was slammed for trying to be funny at the end of the interview as he was leaving. Seeing the moment in person, I didn’t think twice about it, but apparently some viewers online lost their mind (because they’re actually insane). As someone who doesn’t get offended, I don’t understand why others want to be. Gibson was trying to be funny. If you don’t like his joking, don’t laugh. He wasn’t trying to be mean, so why be upset? Coincidentally, one of the most discouraging things for me is other people being offended over nothing and their voices being given validity when they should be treated like rotten fruit. Not every complaint should be accepted as valid. A wise listener will recognize a whiner being true to their whiny self. After seeing this article, I had a whole new appreciation for Gibson’s actions with fans like me during the signing at Fan Expo. Maybe he was so disengaged during the signings because he heard about the complaints for his joking or maybe the last twenty years of Hollywood bashing him has simply worn him down. Maybe he was so guarded because Fan Expo was his first attempt to get into the public eye and hopefully regain some confidence being around fans. When we pray or at least take time to consider what’s going on for others, it can give us patience and kindness for them.
The distance from this summer is even helping my family trip I claimed to be the hardest trip I’ve ever been on seem better. It helps the concussion symptoms have passed and the bills are paid. As I’ve talked about the trip and laugh with people about it, things feel better. The most helpful thing has been looking at the pictures and seeing all the smiles. All the screaming, whining, demands, and my own frustrations of trying to get my group places on time are negative experiences that have faded away leaving room for positive thoughts. It also helps that I’m already finding great joy in planning for next year. Of course, planning is often more fun than living the moment because I’m planning in my climate-controlled house, sitting on a comfortable chair by myself without any screaming, whining, demands, or my own frustrations made worse by the scorching Florida heat in August. Instead, I’m brainstorming, researching, dreaming, and putting the puzzle pieces I make together – a planner’s dream.
I was recently sent a meme entitled: “7 Things Every Child Needs to Hear”.
- I love you
- I am proud of you
- I am sorry
- I forgive you
- I am listening
- Listen to me. We paid a LOT to come to Disney World. I know it’s hot. I know it’s crowded, but you better quit your whining right now before I give you something to whine about. This is supposed to be magical so STOP CRYING AND BE HAPPY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
- You have what it takes.
This meme follows my lesson on the importance of finding humor in difficult times. Not only is joking healing for the person who suffered, it can be very validating for other parents who have had similar experiences. When you can see you’re not alone in feeling a certain way; when your experience is normalized, you typically feel better (unless you’re passive aggressive and want to be a grouchy pants). This meme can also be great for people like my brother who refuses to do these kinds of trips with kids: “See, why I don’t do them?” Yea, but you’re missing out on all the good times… that you need pictures to remind you of later because in the moment they get drowned out by the frustrations.
Tip: Even if we feel better about the challenges in the past, we need to remember they were challenging in order to prevent seeing the present as being less than it is because nostalgia has blinded us.
This idea of doing a family trip and questioning why we did it in the first place because it doesn’t go as we expected falls under a very simple question: If I’m doing the right thing, why does it feel so bad? Shouldn’t doing the right thing like spending time with your family feel good? Sometimes. Shouldn’t doing bad things leave you feeling bad? Sometimes. Unfortunately, something feeling good doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do just like it feeling bad doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do. For instance, people having affairs don’t typically feel terrible about it… until they get caught (and then not everyone feels bad then because some people are so delusional they think they deserved to be doing it because their partner didn’t satisfy their needs). The truth is our brains can lie to us or simply distract us. This is why making time for self reflection (i.e. prayer) is so valuable. When we pause to consider our day, we can see things that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks.
What I should point out is something are discouraging because they should be discouraging. Sometimes we don’t feel good about something because it’s our body’s way of telling us to stop pursuing it or to change what we’re doing. Other times, we need to push through the discouragement because life will always have times of discouragement. Hopefully in our times of reflection we can better determine which category a situation lands.
This week may you consider when you’ve felt time of discouragement that turned out.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.