What makes you feel alive? Like, genuinely full of life? In the years God has afforded you, what moments have caused you to be most glad for the life you have? Are those moments often or really rare? Can they be cultivated? Or is it just a matter of perspective? So many questions!
This week something I read hit me like a ton of bricks:
"Hurt and loss strengthen our desire to heal and thrive."
I think we can all acknowledge there's a pretty significant difference between surviving and thriving. It's become a bit of a catch phrase for today's working-class millennials. We don't want to just survive in our jobs, we want to thrive and have an impact because life is about more than paychecks and mortgages. But humanity has long-since debated how a person "thrives."
To some degree, the concept of thriving is merely an idea and is subject to relative standards. What is considered "thriving" in a developing nation may still appear well below an American suburban standard of "surviving." It's not a hard line and it has only gotten more fluid as the world has both progressed and diversified while also growing more technologically connected. Many of the major movements of our day favor a group of people's idea of what needs to happen in order for more people to thrive. Generally, these are signs of good things -- we care for the well-being of other humans by correcting in justices or making way for new ideas, we acknowledge that life has purpose, and we put action into words. But at the end of the day, thriving can't be defined without also limiting freedom to some extent. It's no surprise then, that while most of us intend to live a life that thrives on what we love and care about, we get stuck. There's no formula for thriving. Even the Sunday school answer of "Jesus" doesn't suffice here because the apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 14 that what may be freedom to some is not to others and that we are not to cause others to stumble just so that we can live however we feel is right. It's really tricky.
Somewhere between the laundry, the errands, work, and having that coveted thing called a social life, we find ourselves slave to the mundane, the routine, and the pretty-much-predictable. And you know, it's not bad. Humans generally are creatures of habit. We like to know what to expect... so in some ways, we settle for a place somewhere past surviving but nowhere near "thriving."
And then... life gets kind of stale. Is this what we spent all those years in school for? Is this all there is to life? Is this the pattern we're going to run until retirement, because that's a lot of the same thing! Wasn't it supposed to be more fun than this? Am I missing something? Friends, I'm here to tell you that if you've been asking these questions, you are not alone. In fact, this continues to surface as one of the top questions I hear people ask in roundabout ways when it comes to talking about their purposes in life. It's entirely possible to survive but feel kind of empty. You can be both busy and bored.
Or maybe you're not bored -- maybe something comes flying out of left field and try as you might you just can't send it back: a scary health issue, a relationship issue you thought you'd solved, a job loss, etc. and all of the sudden, there's no such thing as bored anymore. I had coffee with a friend recently who recounted a difficult circumstance in which she admitted she made a mistake that compounded the already complex situation. But in her reflection, she said something remarkable: "I knew I had messed up, but at the same time, I also felt alive -- and somehow, that feeling of aliveness made the pain of the situation more bearable." It struck me that often, I only feel alive in really happy and positive situations. But to feel alive in messy situations? That's a stretch...
I don't know about you, but when I'm in a mess, I'm looking for the nearest exit and then the fastest route out of town. I do not like conflict, pain, or dwelling in a place of massive uncertainty. And I would have to add, there's a special kind of agony reserved for getting stalled indefinitely in situations like this. This is where waiting is just the WORST. Several years ago when I contemplated moving to the Philippines, I told a friend I really hated transitioning between two seasons of life -- it's like my heart is living in two places and it's hard to be fully present anywhere. He wisely said, "Hey, it's just a reminder that you're still alive. Wouldn't you rather be moving forward knowing that God's leading even if it's a little painful?" I agreed. I want the assurance of God's presence more than I want the comfort of having everything my way. But we need to acknowledge the difficulty of waiting well in the middle of this increasing tension.
So why is it that we want to run from pain? The "duh" answer is: DUH! Because it HURTS! But sit with that question a little longer...
When a conversation gets uncomfortable, what specifically are you uneasy about? Do you actually disagree with the expressed opinions or is it deeper than that, like a feeling of not being heard or understood even though you're doing the best you can to be open and honest?
When the kid you've been working so diligently with on a particular behavior issue just can't seem to get it, are you really that mad at them -- or is the pain also a little bit internal? It seems most parents gain a gremlin or two with the arrival of each kid that loves to whisper things like, "You're not a very good mom if you can't even get your kid to tie their shoes." It's easy to absorb that idea and then unintentionally displace it on an external situation.
When you're passed up for the promotion, are you actually 100% just sad about the loss of a pay raise or is it possible there are issues of self-worth attached to achievement? Those lines are often more blurry than we like to admit to ourselves, but remember: you are more than your job title.
See, it's not usually the behavior or the act or the stimulus itself that's painful -- it's whatever it evokes out of us that causes us to say, "Ouch! NO! Take it back!" We live in a world of sin and natural consequences. Think of sin like bruises on your body. For some reason, everybody has them -- some are self-inflicted, some are inflicted by others, and some we were just born with like everybody else in our family. And if somebody pokes one of your bruises, it wasn't their finger that caused pain, it was the fact that they hit an area that was already sensitive. Yet, how often do we get mad about whatever poked us?
There's a critical junction here we need to acknowledge: we have a choice in our response to the "pokes" life throws at our bruises. The quotation I opened this post with suggests that when pain or loss comes our way, it propels us toward healing and thriving but both of those take some time. But what if we stop short? What if we only heal enough to not be in pain but bypass all the extra work that goes into genuinely thriving? It's logically silly to expect phenomenal results from "good enough" work. It's the same reason we don't expect Rice-a-Roni to taste like a high-end restaurant: good enough values time over quality, whereas thriving is long-range focused from the start.
A few years ago, there was someone I needed to apologize to and while I knew it was the right thing to do, it was really vulnerable to actually take the steps to do it. I realized after the fact that my primary motivation for the apology was to get the nagging "You need to do this" feeling off my back (thanks, Holy Spirit!). But because I followed through, there was healing and thriving that followed. Thankfully the apology was received well and we had an exchange that never would've happened if I would've just told myself it was no big deal. In future months, I saw increasing value in having that positive experience under my belt. It was much more freeing to live as someone who could admit I'm imperfect and yet not above an apology rather than continually swatting away that annoying little prompt to apologize every time a similar situation came my way. The longer we justify a behavior, the more we have to deceive ourselves to keep repeating it.
So, what if we saw pain and loss differently? I don't like what this implies... it implies that our natural human thinking would have to be flipped backwards. Instead of running from it, we press into it and ask, "What can I learn from this? How is this growing me in other areas?" And then suddenly, James 1 makes a whole lot more sense. So does 1 Corinthians 6... And Philippians 4... Hmm-- what a coincidence. As I think about some of the hardest things that have happened in my life, most of them in fact revolve around pain and loss and a whole lot of waiting and working toward healing... and almost all of them resulted in beauty I could've never manufactured without the darkness of pain. It took years in most cases, but I can confidently say, some of the worst situations have in fact cultivated deeper healing and pushed me toward thriving.
What's the bottom line? I hope you feel alive, even if life is hard -- especially if life is hard! There is hope. It's only in Jesus that our pain can become healed and we can be better. But waiting well means staying active because thriving doesn't just magically happen.
This week something I read hit me like a ton of bricks:
"Hurt and loss strengthen our desire to heal and thrive."
I think we can all acknowledge there's a pretty significant difference between surviving and thriving. It's become a bit of a catch phrase for today's working-class millennials. We don't want to just survive in our jobs, we want to thrive and have an impact because life is about more than paychecks and mortgages. But humanity has long-since debated how a person "thrives."
To some degree, the concept of thriving is merely an idea and is subject to relative standards. What is considered "thriving" in a developing nation may still appear well below an American suburban standard of "surviving." It's not a hard line and it has only gotten more fluid as the world has both progressed and diversified while also growing more technologically connected. Many of the major movements of our day favor a group of people's idea of what needs to happen in order for more people to thrive. Generally, these are signs of good things -- we care for the well-being of other humans by correcting in justices or making way for new ideas, we acknowledge that life has purpose, and we put action into words. But at the end of the day, thriving can't be defined without also limiting freedom to some extent. It's no surprise then, that while most of us intend to live a life that thrives on what we love and care about, we get stuck. There's no formula for thriving. Even the Sunday school answer of "Jesus" doesn't suffice here because the apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 14 that what may be freedom to some is not to others and that we are not to cause others to stumble just so that we can live however we feel is right. It's really tricky.
Somewhere between the laundry, the errands, work, and having that coveted thing called a social life, we find ourselves slave to the mundane, the routine, and the pretty-much-predictable. And you know, it's not bad. Humans generally are creatures of habit. We like to know what to expect... so in some ways, we settle for a place somewhere past surviving but nowhere near "thriving."
And then... life gets kind of stale. Is this what we spent all those years in school for? Is this all there is to life? Is this the pattern we're going to run until retirement, because that's a lot of the same thing! Wasn't it supposed to be more fun than this? Am I missing something? Friends, I'm here to tell you that if you've been asking these questions, you are not alone. In fact, this continues to surface as one of the top questions I hear people ask in roundabout ways when it comes to talking about their purposes in life. It's entirely possible to survive but feel kind of empty. You can be both busy and bored.
Or maybe you're not bored -- maybe something comes flying out of left field and try as you might you just can't send it back: a scary health issue, a relationship issue you thought you'd solved, a job loss, etc. and all of the sudden, there's no such thing as bored anymore. I had coffee with a friend recently who recounted a difficult circumstance in which she admitted she made a mistake that compounded the already complex situation. But in her reflection, she said something remarkable: "I knew I had messed up, but at the same time, I also felt alive -- and somehow, that feeling of aliveness made the pain of the situation more bearable." It struck me that often, I only feel alive in really happy and positive situations. But to feel alive in messy situations? That's a stretch...
I don't know about you, but when I'm in a mess, I'm looking for the nearest exit and then the fastest route out of town. I do not like conflict, pain, or dwelling in a place of massive uncertainty. And I would have to add, there's a special kind of agony reserved for getting stalled indefinitely in situations like this. This is where waiting is just the WORST. Several years ago when I contemplated moving to the Philippines, I told a friend I really hated transitioning between two seasons of life -- it's like my heart is living in two places and it's hard to be fully present anywhere. He wisely said, "Hey, it's just a reminder that you're still alive. Wouldn't you rather be moving forward knowing that God's leading even if it's a little painful?" I agreed. I want the assurance of God's presence more than I want the comfort of having everything my way. But we need to acknowledge the difficulty of waiting well in the middle of this increasing tension.
So why is it that we want to run from pain? The "duh" answer is: DUH! Because it HURTS! But sit with that question a little longer...
When a conversation gets uncomfortable, what specifically are you uneasy about? Do you actually disagree with the expressed opinions or is it deeper than that, like a feeling of not being heard or understood even though you're doing the best you can to be open and honest?
When the kid you've been working so diligently with on a particular behavior issue just can't seem to get it, are you really that mad at them -- or is the pain also a little bit internal? It seems most parents gain a gremlin or two with the arrival of each kid that loves to whisper things like, "You're not a very good mom if you can't even get your kid to tie their shoes." It's easy to absorb that idea and then unintentionally displace it on an external situation.
When you're passed up for the promotion, are you actually 100% just sad about the loss of a pay raise or is it possible there are issues of self-worth attached to achievement? Those lines are often more blurry than we like to admit to ourselves, but remember: you are more than your job title.
See, it's not usually the behavior or the act or the stimulus itself that's painful -- it's whatever it evokes out of us that causes us to say, "Ouch! NO! Take it back!" We live in a world of sin and natural consequences. Think of sin like bruises on your body. For some reason, everybody has them -- some are self-inflicted, some are inflicted by others, and some we were just born with like everybody else in our family. And if somebody pokes one of your bruises, it wasn't their finger that caused pain, it was the fact that they hit an area that was already sensitive. Yet, how often do we get mad about whatever poked us?
There's a critical junction here we need to acknowledge: we have a choice in our response to the "pokes" life throws at our bruises. The quotation I opened this post with suggests that when pain or loss comes our way, it propels us toward healing and thriving but both of those take some time. But what if we stop short? What if we only heal enough to not be in pain but bypass all the extra work that goes into genuinely thriving? It's logically silly to expect phenomenal results from "good enough" work. It's the same reason we don't expect Rice-a-Roni to taste like a high-end restaurant: good enough values time over quality, whereas thriving is long-range focused from the start.
A few years ago, there was someone I needed to apologize to and while I knew it was the right thing to do, it was really vulnerable to actually take the steps to do it. I realized after the fact that my primary motivation for the apology was to get the nagging "You need to do this" feeling off my back (thanks, Holy Spirit!). But because I followed through, there was healing and thriving that followed. Thankfully the apology was received well and we had an exchange that never would've happened if I would've just told myself it was no big deal. In future months, I saw increasing value in having that positive experience under my belt. It was much more freeing to live as someone who could admit I'm imperfect and yet not above an apology rather than continually swatting away that annoying little prompt to apologize every time a similar situation came my way. The longer we justify a behavior, the more we have to deceive ourselves to keep repeating it.
So, what if we saw pain and loss differently? I don't like what this implies... it implies that our natural human thinking would have to be flipped backwards. Instead of running from it, we press into it and ask, "What can I learn from this? How is this growing me in other areas?" And then suddenly, James 1 makes a whole lot more sense. So does 1 Corinthians 6... And Philippians 4... Hmm-- what a coincidence. As I think about some of the hardest things that have happened in my life, most of them in fact revolve around pain and loss and a whole lot of waiting and working toward healing... and almost all of them resulted in beauty I could've never manufactured without the darkness of pain. It took years in most cases, but I can confidently say, some of the worst situations have in fact cultivated deeper healing and pushed me toward thriving.
What's the bottom line? I hope you feel alive, even if life is hard -- especially if life is hard! There is hope. It's only in Jesus that our pain can become healed and we can be better. But waiting well means staying active because thriving doesn't just magically happen.
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