Your pain is deep, and it won’t just go away … Your call is to bring that pain home. As long as your wounded part remains foreign to your adult self, your pain will injure you as well as others. Yes, you have to incorporate your pain into yourself and let it bear fruit in your heart and in the hearts of others. This is what Jesus means when he asks you to take up your cross. He encourages you to recognize and embrace your unique suffering and to trust that your way to salvation lies therein. Taking up your cross means, first of all, befriending your wounds and letting them reveal to you your own truth.
— Henri Nouwen from “The Inner Voice of Love”
I was introduced to Henri when I was 15 or 16, when my inclination for risk taking was not high. Although, in retrospect, that may have been my peak. My parents are big planners, more-so as they age, a reality I ensure does not escape their attention. Never argue with my parents about which pattern to follow in their grocery store or changing lanes two miles before a turn. Outings, finances, what's for dinner, the correct order in which you wash dishes, how to organize the grocery cart, whom will text whom a reminder to bring the movie: you name it, there is a plan. And I like plans. I manage 20-30 cases at a time at work, and the population I serve does not generally plan well. I get paid to plan and I teach others how to plan. One of my favorite past times as a child was to "organize" my Mother's pantry, MUCH to her dismay, and I could never figure out why such a great effort to plan could be frustrating to anyone? After all, is it really a problem that you can't see any canned vegetables?? Hardly.
What I came to fall in love with was Henri's woundedness and how it resonated with my own surrounding risk taking. He took what I already knew to be true, that risks and vulnerability (or not having a plan) can be terrifying and painful, and he modeled a journey of acknowledging what is broken. I don't like to use the word "embrace" as it relates to pain or discomfort. It implies that I am holding it close AND that I am functioning with said embraced pain. In my mind, I'm am pinching my pain with the tips of two fingers, held out an an arms length, scrunching up my nose and likely looking in another direction. I like "acknowledging" better because, yes pain, I acknowledge that I have you pinched, as far away as I can without living in complete denial, but that's all you are getting! Not entirely functional.
One of my favorite things to teach kids and families is the value of a good struggle. Consistently, I will choose puzzles or strategy games over luck-of-the-draw games. (Sidebar: ThinkFun is an AWESOME brand) Sorry Candy Land, you're just a bit lame. Always, the natural reaction is to teach the child how to solve the problem without having to struggle. Problem solving is good, and less frustration all around, except when the child is confronted with an overwhelming task at school and tips desks over. Say what you want about the processed food diet, I know some preschoolers with muscles. I typically and intentionally wait for a child to become ticked off a bit before offering assistance. And then we practice validating. There's no learning how to cope with hard work unless you can acknowledge that its hard. I even have kids that are only practicing trying at this point. Even if you can't figure it out in the allotted time, your victory is that you acknowledged it was hard and didn't run out of the room screaming. Coping skills pressure cooker!
Befriending wounds...acknowledging my own truth...incorporating my pain into myself...part of what I think is hard in attempting to give voice to what I do, the broken system I work within, saying things in a way that is honoring to poverty and mental illness and God--is that it's also a process of acknowledging what is painful in myself. There is so much and so many we can blame these terrible things on, or is there?
One of my favorite things to teach kids and families is the value of a good struggle. Consistently, I will choose puzzles or strategy games over luck-of-the-draw games. (Sidebar: ThinkFun is an AWESOME brand) Sorry Candy Land, you're just a bit lame. Always, the natural reaction is to teach the child how to solve the problem without having to struggle. Problem solving is good, and less frustration all around, except when the child is confronted with an overwhelming task at school and tips desks over. Say what you want about the processed food diet, I know some preschoolers with muscles. I typically and intentionally wait for a child to become ticked off a bit before offering assistance. And then we practice validating. There's no learning how to cope with hard work unless you can acknowledge that its hard. I even have kids that are only practicing trying at this point. Even if you can't figure it out in the allotted time, your victory is that you acknowledged it was hard and didn't run out of the room screaming. Coping skills pressure cooker!
Befriending wounds...acknowledging my own truth...incorporating my pain into myself...part of what I think is hard in attempting to give voice to what I do, the broken system I work within, saying things in a way that is honoring to poverty and mental illness and God--is that it's also a process of acknowledging what is painful in myself. There is so much and so many we can blame these terrible things on, or is there?
No comments:
Post a Comment