All will be well

As of the writing of this blog, we are mere days away from another workshop. And… the government shutdown has been affecting air travel. We’ve been preparing ways to compensate and respond to potential outcomes, and of course we’ve been praying that all attendees get in smoothly.

Which actually leads into something that I’ve been thinking about. I don't need to tell you that stress is bad for us. We've all heard or read statistics about how bad it is for both our physical and mental health, which are inseparably tied together. And we all know that we don't enjoy the way stress feels. That familiar race of our pulse. The tightness in our chest. I can feel it just typing out the physical effects of it. Stop typing about it Brandon and go take some deep breaths!

What I am curious about today is what we do when we plan well for something and something stressful enters the scene uninvited. This upcoming event is an easy example. We have planned for it and are ready for all that it will bring, but how would we ever know there would be air travel restrictions because of a government shutdown? Hard to prepare for that!

But beyond that example, I'm seeing this pop up in other ways in my life right now and in Sam's (and, I bet, in yours). I had a very close cousin pass away in July while I was out in Colorado for Noble. It was such a hard and strange thing to be in the presence of so much beauty happening around me while also trying to grieve an unexpected loss. Now, as I prepare for this Noble, my aunt, who is the matriarch of our family, has been assigned hospice nurses as vascular dementia has quickly taken her down a road of no return. There is a very real possibility that something happens to her during Noble or during the upcoming holidays or my upcoming birthday. Hard to plan for that!

Sam has had many unexpected stresses pop up in his life uninvited this year that I will have to let him share at his discretion. And as I mentioned, I would have to imagine that plenty of unexpected stress has popped up out of nowhere in your life this year. So what do we do about it?

If you're like me, you typically either let it overwhelm you or compartmentalize it until you feel like you have the space to process. I would just like to say that now is the time to invoke the old adage, "do as I say, not as I do!" Letting unexpected stress overwhelm us is not helpful. We are completely flooded and reality becomes difficult to hold onto. Compartmentalizing is equally as unhelpful! Yes, that was a survival skill for me as I grew up in difficult circumstances, but I know better ways to cope with life now and it's a habit that I need to break.

The good news is that I, and you, have options.

When unexpected stressors enter the picture, especially when they threaten to usurp well-made plans, what if we were curious and compassionate about them? What if instead of being immediately flooded or shut off, I asked myself how I'm really feeling and why this particular stressor is creating such an extreme response?

What if I went to a trusted friend and said, "I'm feeling stressed about this. Would you help me talk through it and remind me what's real?" What if I went to integrate some beauty into my heart at that moment, not as a means of escaping reality, but of reminding myself that even during hard times, there is beauty around me that restores?

The obvious truth is that life rarely ever goes exactly as we planned. But our response to life is completely up to us. Do we dare to accept reality, along with our place in it and lack of control over it, and still choose to trust that all will be well? 

Mary Oliver puts this into words that stun me with their beauty and clarity in her poem, Dogfish.

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - 

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

And look! look! look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging towards them.

And probably,

if they don't waste their time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.