On Waking Up, part 1
Imagine sitting with a couple, asking why they’ve come to therapy. The wife shares that she feels miserable. Disconnected. Troubled. Discouraged. In asking the same question of the husband, he states, “I feel great! I’ve always loved her. I don’t know why she’s having a problem. But she asked me to come along, so, you know… I came.”
Someone in this story is asleep. Which one? Does it seem like the wife is the one with the problem? Yes it’s true, the wife does have a problem, but she’s starting to know it. She might not know what to do about it, but she’s asking for help. It is the husband who is asleep! (Not making any general assumptions here—it could just as easily be the wife.) So far, he has stayed distant from, numb to, ASLEEP!, to the distance in the relationship. He unconsciously keeps this distance in place by believing that if anything is felt to be wrong, SHE is the one with the problem. (If you’re following along with the “On Foundations” page, I’m talking about the Sleeping Heart.)
Living a life while sleeping is a VERY common human phenomenon. George MacDonald puts it this way,
“The condition of most men and women seems to me a life in death, an unreal dream existence, a pre-waking, empty mere going-on. That they do not feel it so does not mean such is not the case. The sow wallowing in the mire may assert it her way of being clean.”
God has made us with some built-in ways to be alert to things in our life. Yet for many reasons, we learn (often very unconsciously!) to ignore these signs. The sleepy symptoms could be:
I’m disconnected from my emotions.
I’m disconnected from my body.
My false illusions are firmly in place. I am, others are, the world is, as I believe them to be.
My life seems to be rolling along well and everything seems just fine. My strategies are working for me.
Thankfully, God is committed to wake us up. And I’m sorry to relay, (and don’t you already know it?) the main way He does this, is PAIN. Ouch!! Doesn’t that seem true? Unless we are hurting, we often prefer to stay right where we are. And God has something else in mind for us. GMcD again,
“In the perfection of God’s creation, the result of that suffering is curative. The pain works for the healing of the breach.”
Here are some of the ways I began to wake up in my own story:
I was barely 22 when I moved overseas for the first time. I worked with a group of people that were older and wiser than me—(They were in their 30’s!) When we met together as a team, they would share with each other about what was going on in their own insides. They would share their feelings, and sometimes, there were tears. And everyone seemed to think this was completely normal. I was floored. It felt odd to me. Very odd.
And, I was starting to have more feelings of my own, blech! Life overseas is sometimes compared to a toothpaste tube— whatever is in there, gets squeezed, and comes out. It had been a dream to move overseas, and I was finally there! And it was NOT awesome some days. Sometimes, I was sad. and lonely. and discouraged. And I couldn’t get these feelings squished back in the tube.
Further, in the fall of my 2nd year living there, I developed an ovarian cyst, which led to a surgery and treatment that sent my hormones all over the place. I had always been composed, self-controlled, even-keeled and positive. (Can you hear the illusions I had in place? This is how I saw myself.) Now I can see it more clearly, that I had become SO skilled at slapping “positive truth” on top of negative feelings! It took whacked out chemicals in my body to expose and dismantle my self-perception of “always fine.” It was painful, but now I can see, it very much needed to happen.
How about you? Can you reflect on how a painful part of your past story began to wake you up?
