Anxiety and Hope

Anxiety and Hope

Guest Writer: Heather Honaker

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
- Chuang Tzu

Jack August Ellie

My daughter Ellie refuses to eat chicken without ketchup.

My oldest, Jack, will not slide down a slide without yelling, “Yahoo!”

The youngest, August, can’t sleep without his stuffed puppy, Deke.

And for some reason, my body will not function without anxiety. If there is even a hint of calm in my spirit, my brain finds something to get worked up about. If things are going well, that little voice pops in and says, “Nope, don’t get comfortable, because it is definitely going to fall apart again. I promise.”

I plan things like trips or parties, and just as soon as I have gotten myself committed to the idea, that voice comes back in and says, “Buckle up, buttercup, it’s about to go down.”

It is a race between my mind and body at night – which will fall asleep first? Will my body relax quickly enough that it won’t give my mind time to start the downward spiral into everything I didn’t do well enough today?

My therapist says that voice serves as a manager to protect me from disappointment and served me well at some point. We talked about that a lot recently in one of our visits, and I realized that the last time I got really – I mean REALLY – excited without that little voice in my ear was when I found out that Ellie would be a girl. That was right before her diagnoses were discovered, and my whole world changed.

“Don’t you have a kid with something wrong with it?” I was asked this week by someone I hadn’t seen in a while.

I wanted to roll my eyes and leave while waving my middle finger in the air, but I caught myself.

“I have a 4-year-old daughter with Down syndrome and heart problems,” I said with a gigantic smile, “but she is doing great. And I have a smart first-grader and a 3-year-old who just had a birthday. They all drive me crazy.”

I read that you can’t have anxiety without hope. That makes me feel a little better about what I accept as simply part of my DNA. I want to be known as a hopeful person, even if she is a nervous wreck who is always planning for the worst-case scenario. Just like I want my kids to be known as the unique, kind, talented loves of my life that they are, instead of the problems they create in their wake.

I don’t know much, but one thing I do know is that you can’t feel the joy of the highest highs without experiencing the sorrow of the lowest lows. If we hide from the sadness and anxiety, we can’t get underneath that to remember the spark of hope that keeps us moving forward and fuels our fires to change the world.

Heather Honaker
Read more about her family’s oddities, challenges, and special needs at TypicallyNotTypical.com.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Nouwen: Being the Beloved

Nouwen: Self-rejection and being the Beloved

“Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” Henri Nouwen (You are the Beloved Convergent Books 2017)

Smithsonian American Art

This is a basic premise of Henri Nouwen’s about the spiritual life. He believes that when God tells Jesus he is the beloved son at his baptism, God also speaks to us. Nouwen believes our primal identity is as beloved sons and daughters of God.

When we can accept God’s unconditional love, we are then called to go out into the world and share this love. Unconditional love is only sustained when it is shared. It cannot be love, only of self. When we forget or cannot believe the truth about this love, self-rejection sets in that can destroy us and others. Unconditional love is constantly being attacked by ourselves, others, and the world around us. We must be reminded about it every day, every second.

One way to keep it is to be connected to a loving community where others strive to hear the voice of unconditional love, where the voice of the God of love is magnified and transmitted. Some days, the voice that we are beloved is so soft we cannot hear it. Our ears become stopped up by the voices of the world. These days, we need friends to remind us that we are beloved. On other days, we know we are beloved and now remind others. We are constantly being healed and healing others of this self-rejection living among us, which is like an infectious disease.

However, unconditional love is always stronger, stronger than even death.

Joanna     https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

God Hole

God Hole

“There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes, I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath.”—Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, Daily Quote, Inwardoutward.org, Church of the Saviour, June 28, 2018.

Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman studying law in the Netherlands in the 1940s who lived down the street from Anne Frank. She died at 29 in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. She kept a diary of her inner life, published after her death, describing the severe persecution of the Jews in Holland during those times.

Her transformation from fear and hate to love, caring, kindness, and compassion for those suffering around her makes her an icon for us today. Through the help of her psychotherapist, she learned to see the God hole in people and situations during those unbelievably troublesome times, and fill that God hole with the love she had known.

This is indeed our ministry as spiritual friends. Each of us has a hole in our mind, our heart, and our body that only God can fill. So, instead, we try to fill it with relationships, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sports, work, power, family, writing, reading, and patriotism.
We can also fill it with hate, persecution, bigotry, self-centeredness, intimidation, cruelty, negativity, pessimism, hopelessness, despair, apathy, and indifference. As spiritual friends, God calls us to help each other find that God hole and fill it with the best unconditional love we can muster.

It begins with our presence with each other and listening.

I remember a dear friend who comes into my office at the hospital early one morning about a relationship that had recently broken up. He was depressed, sad, broken-hearted, and in tears. We talked for some time. But, mostly, I listened and tried to let him know how much I cared about him.
Late in the conversation, I mentioned the God hole. Somehow, he intuitively realized that this relationship had completely filled his God hole. I only had to say very few words. Then, a light bulb went on. I rarely mention the God hole when someone is suffering so greatly, but something moved me to bring it up that early morning.
Hopefully, the Holy Spirit was guiding both of us.

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