Life Can be Hard at Christmas

For the last couple of weeks, a friend and I have been talking off and on about how life can be hard at Christmas even when we have great family and friends who love us. Christmas is a tender time for the human heart. The holiday season boasts of peace, joy and love, yet we hurt over losses, relationship challenges, lost or stagnant dreams, and missed goals. Emotions are stirred up and can crash into each other and we experience many things. The season of hope over the birth of Christ can feel more like an open season on our emotions than a season of hope.

Why is this? Why does the most hope-filled and joyful holiday of the year seem to trigger anything from a sense of melancholy to intense feelings of grief and loneliness? Could it be that the enemy of our soul might try to distract us from the true meaning of Christmas?

Jesus was born as the hope of the world. The Christmas holiday celebrates the birth of the Son of God Who chose to enter into human history by living as a man and dying for our sins. Being forgiven of our sins and escaping their penalty is a message of great hope. It is a message and a story that the devil will do everything he can to stop. Two thousand years have gone by, yet the story of a child born in a barn with angels announcing His birth is still told. I believe the devil knows he cannot stop the telling of the story so he uses other tactics like conflict, loneliness, and grief to distract us. He also uses depression and sickness among other things. The goal? To get us to doubt God’s love and goodness toward us so that we will not believe in the Son that was born to us, the One Who can save us and speak hope, peace, and love to our hearts.

I don’t know about you, but I experienced many painful emotions this holiday season. In spite of these emotions, I made sure I focused on the hope and love that only God can give. I refused to doubt God’s love and goodness toward me even in the midst of grief and loneliness. You know what happened? God provided comfort for me in many ways right in the middle of the grief and loneliness. God was so creative. He blessed me with the opportunity to have a new Christmas tree for a room in my house where I have wanted to put one for ten years, a father who put lights up on the outside of my house, a daughter and new son-in-law who filled my stocking when they came to visit on Christmas Day, and a friend who let me cry on her shoulder (literally!) when I was hurting too much to keep it inside.

Christmas truly is the season of love and hope. And if the season triggered despair, discouragement, depression, grief, loneliness, or any other painful emotion for you, hold on tightly to hope anyway and trust God’s love more than you ever have before.

Pain versus Suffering

Some friends and I were mutually encouraging each other this week. We are struggling with being full-time students and bemoaning the woes of reading textbooks, conducting online research, creating PowerPoint presentations, and writing papers. All of these friends are also a spouse, a parent, an employee, and serve in ministry at their church or in some other volunteer capacity in their communities. As we encouraged each other I thought of an idea I read in a book years ago.

The idea presented by the author was one of pain versus suffering. Pain is a fact of life. Regardless of how hard we try we cannot avoid the pain that is a part of life. Life just hurts sometimes. But suffering is something different. Suffering is what happens when we try to wrestle life to the ground and make it behave on our own terms. Suffering occurs when we do not let go of a pain and move on. I’ve been challenged today to look at areas in which I think I might be suffering and determine whether or not I am trying to make life behave on my terms.

What about you? Is what you are experiencing pain? Or is it suffering? Are you giving certain feelings and emotions power over you to such a degree that they keep you in a continual state of suffering? Maybe you are like my friends and I who are so frustrated with doing homework as we work on our college degrees that the thought of writing one more paper is enough to push us over the edge. Maybe you are a stay-at-home mom or dad and the thought of changing one more diaper, cleaning up one more spill, or dealing with the chaos makes you want to scream. Maybe you are an empty nester and this season of life with adult children leaves you with a feeling of melancholy you cannot seem to shake. Or maybe you are in a work environment where expectations are unrealistic and mercy is non-existent. You go home every night so stressed out and exhausted you do not have any energy to give to the rest of life. Maybe you are just trying to survive the current economic crisis. Have you lost a loved one through death or a divorce and the grief feels like a wrecking ball has made a home in your heart even though the event occurred some time ago?

It is possible to take steps to minimize and even eliminate our suffering. The first step is to determine how much of our suffering is caused by trying to hold onto things we cannot control. Take the time to experience whatever is going on. Do not deny it or ignore it. Let your emotions have their say and do not fight back against something that cannot change. Recognize the situation for what it is. But don’t stay sitting in your emotions. Move onto the second step: accept it. To accept it means you no longer fight against the situation or you make a choice to change. Change yourself or, if possible, change the circumstance. Even if you cannot change the circumstance you can change your attitude about it. The final step is to get over it. Let go of the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that keep you in a state of suffering and move on. If you do this, you will put yourself in a place to receive healing and recovery. The pain may still exist to one degree or another but the suffering no longer affects your viewpoint about life.

Experience it. Accept it. Get over it. This is a process and will take time so be patient with yourself. Believe that you can minimize your suffering and experience joy in life. Pain versus suffering…the choice truly is yours.

Ride the Wave

Yesterday, I sent a friend of mine an e-mail asking for prayer support regarding an emotional thing. I felt the emotional dissonance the minute I woke up and it caught me by surprise. I immediately prayed and continued to do what needed to be done. I got up and spent time with the Lord then got ready for work. I left the house but confess I cried most of the way to work. I admit that I do not know the source of this emotional turmoil so all I could do was ask God to help me pull it together so I could get through the workday. I assured Him that if the emotions still needed to express themselves then I would let them, BUT…I needed to get through the workday first.

My friend replied back later in the morning (my day starts much earlier than hers) and told me that she had prayed that God would give me His peace in understanding this emotional thing and that He would give me peace as I “ride the wave.” She encouraged me by telling me that God was riding the wave with me.

“Ride the wave” brought an analogy to mind that this same friend offered to me a couple of years ago in the height of the most severe emotional pain I have ever felt. She told me that I would get through it and provided a word picture. She knows about my love of sports and extreme sports and I don’t know if that’s why she used this analogy or if God just gave it to her because He knew I would respond to it but the analogy went like this…

My friend told me that what I was experiencing was like riding a surfboard. The waves come and you go for a ride. Sometimes the waves are too rough or too big and they knock you off the board. My friend said that the waves I was experiencing were rough and big. She said I needed to keep getting back on the board and trying it again. The more I tried the better I would be become at identifying and managing my emotions. She was right. The difference between where I was at two years ago and where I am today is like the difference between surfing ankle snappers (that’s a small wave) to catching a big mama (that’s a big wave) off the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii! Despite the emotional surfing skills I have acquired over the last two years, there are times when the rough and big waves will come and I must ride them out trusting that God is with me.

How do we ride out an emotional wave? Confess Scriptures from the Bible and anything that has a positive, faith-filled message. I say Scriptures out loud that describe peace and strength and power and victory. My friend and I have selected Philippians 4:13 to help us this year: “I can do all things through Jesus who gives me strength.” I speak words of encouragement to myself and just like a fin on a surfboard slices through the water and helps keep the surfer afloat and traveling in the direction s/he wants to go, the words I speak slice through the emotional wave going on in my soul. The Word of God keeps me afloat and moving in the direction I need to go. It takes practice and it takes time but eventually the emotional wave will have minimal impact and you will learn how to ride it. But every now and then an emotional wave will hit without warning and it’s great to have the Word of God and a friend help you get back on the board.

Surf’s up! Grab your board and let’s go surfing!

Emotions and The Will

We can let our emotions control us or we can take control over them by exercising our will.

Feeling hatred, bitterness, and anger? Choose forgiveness then act forgiving.

Feeling mean? Choose kindness then be kind.

Feel like giving up? Choose to stay committed and act devoted.

Feel discouraged? Choose to be happy then smile and enjoy life.

Our problem is that we have allowed our emotions to rule over us and dictate or heavily influence our behavior. Start exercising your power of choice by using your will. Take charge of your will and stop letting your emotions take charge of you.

It's Okay to Cry

I think I have finally learned how to cry. You might be thinking “What is there to learn about how to cry? You shed tears and you cry.” For me, crying wasn’t that simple.

The majority of my life has been spent with my emotions locked away. A variety of circumstances taught me how to turn off my emotions when I was a child and, as a result, I cried very little as a child, teenager, or adult. I have not been cold-hearted and emotionless. I have just not allowed myself to experience emotions in a normal, healthy manner.

Sixteen months ago my life was turned upside down and the end result was losing something I valued very much. I was placed in a situation that I had no control over and was betrayed with lies and broken promises. The extreme pain I felt as a result of this situation forced on the emotional switch I kept turned off for many, many years. As a result, many years of hurt and anger were released too quickly and I was unable to deal with my emotions appropriately. Through my circumstance, I learned how to experience emotions and identify them. I also learned how to let emotions express themselves and I have been on a journey to learn how to manage my emotions. I can honestly say with the testimony of my friends and those who know me that I am more mature now after my life was torn apart than what I was before. I believe that learning how to cry has contributed to my growth.

Prior to my life-changing event, I would cry on occasion. However, outside of crying in church I would cry only when stress forced the tears to fall. The tears were nothing but a stress release I could not control. I did not want to cry because I believed crying was useless. I did not cry willingly and hated it when I cried. I did not talk to anyone about the pain I carried inside me for the same reason I did not cry. I kept my pain inside and chose not to talk to people because I believed that talking was useless. Talking would not change the situation or the circumstances. As a result of this belief system, I kept everything inside, all my hurt and all my tears. I realize now my philosophy on crying and talking to others was faulty and did me nothing but harm.

I have learned this past sixteen months that crying can be therapeutic and healing . I found it is true that crying and talking about my pain does not change my situation or the circumstances. But that’s okay because I have learned that crying and talking about my pain changes me. When I cry these days, I cry in the direction of my Heavenly Father believing and experiencing that He comforts those who mourn and hurt. I have learned as I cry in the direction of my Heavenly Father that it is possible to cry as a result of deep pain yet have hope and peace at the same time.

My philosophy about crying these days is this: It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to express pain and hurt through tears. It’s okay to talk and let someone else in on your pain. And even though the circumstances may not change, you can change and rise above the circumstances that caused your pain.

Go ahead. Grab a box of Kleenex or a hankie and cry in God’s direction. Take time to mourn and weep and pour out your heart to Him. Ask God to teach you how to cry if you need to. Ask Him to comfort you while you express your hurt with tears. Ask Him to sit next to you while you cry. Trust your hurts and tears to a Heavenly Father Who loves you and will speak peace and comfort and healing to your wounded soul.

Bible References
Psalm 77:1: “I cry out to God without holding back…” (New Living Translation)

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…”
Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Matthew 5:4: “Blesssed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”