On Healing

    We've lived under the constant reminder of COVID-19 for nine months now. While there are promising vaccines on the way, we will be living with the virus for quite some time. For so many, there is grief and distrust where there once was optimism. For others, there’s been a subtler dulling of joy. I think that coronavirus, along with every other disaster and loss of this year, has taken a toll on the unique human capacity of imagination. I see it in myself most plainly. Perhaps you can relate to this fear I have. Sometimes this fear masquerades itself as a hard truth, an imminent fact when things are looking their darkest in the world or in my life personally. The fear says, in essence, that all things are heading towards ruin. The fear brings with it doubts about our human capacity for goodness, and for change. It doubts God’s care for and action in the world. Is this a fear you’re well acquainted with, too?
    So many of the things that once sustained people spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially have been uprooted. We’ve been unmoored, and many are feeling a bit lost at sea, a storm within and uncertainty without. Many of us are preoccupied with school, work, and life responsibilities and are largely able to ignore our respective losses and hurts, but what happens once we finish finals, return home and have more time for our thoughts? It’s no wonder we’re all feeling a sort of fatigue that sleep has yet to beat. Healing is difficult. Emotional progress is hard. It’s easier to settle with how things are, than to work for how we want things to be for ourselves, and for all of the people and things within our communities. Sometimes it’s easier to make the most of drifting out at sea than it is to fight the waves, the winds, and the current to arrive at our destination.
    I don’t like how dramatic this all sounds, but it's something I've nevertheless thought a lot about and continued to contend with: the difficulty of healing. Pretending that things don’t bother me or scare me has yet to work for me. Doing everything I can—be it good ol’ fashioned hard work or an excess of leisure—doesn’t distract me for long from the circumstances, feelings and beliefs I have to eventually process through. 
    Here’s what does work. Acknowledging both the good and the bad that the past months have brought brings us back to reality, and out of our worlds of emotional reactivity. Gratitude keeps us grounded. Naming the thing in the air reassures us that we’re not crazy for how we feel about ourselves and the world and how we respond to it. Taking a moment to recognize how things can remind us that we can—if not today then someday—overcome. This is how we can find our hope again. Not in avoidance of the tough things of life but meeting them a hard-fought hope despite the odds.

    And now, I’ll bring these ideas down and “land the plane,” so to speak, in my own experience.

    I know how I work, the avenues and backstreet routes my brain takes. When I don't feel my best, and when I'm alone, I arrive at old, unresolved feelings. Old thoughts or situations I thought I made peace with resurface. Doubts that have festered the last few months about myself, the world and my place in it unsteady me. I think on some level I've let myself believe, for as hard as I try, I will never truly be rid of these things. That is, until I began to treat myself with kindness, and began to reclaim my imagination. For some reason, I’ve let kindness be something I readily give in abundance to others, then I withhold from myself. I’m critical. Mean. I see the worst parts of myself in high definition: the highlight reel of my worst moments is often revisited. I give so little grace to myself. Judgement and anger come easy, ruminating over all of the ways I’ve fallen short of my own unrealistic goals and expectations. When successes do come in the different spheres of my life, I never really let myself celebrate them. I sabotage my own progress with a phrase you’ve perhaps caught yourself saying: “If only I learned, did or said that sooner…” It’s an absolutely rotten phrase that robs you of a moment to recognize an accomplishment and pat yourself on the back. None of these things are intentional decisions so much as they’re a force of habit.
    The turning point for me was in turning inward, but not only that, but meeting the deep hurts I hold within myself with compassion. I’ve begun seeing changes in the way I think about myself because I decided to love that 13-year-old Adoniah that learned that he wasn’t good enough. Realizing that I was holding onto old hurts helped me to understand better why certain things make me angry, sad, or upset. New experiences can be reminders of painful, old ones, and so that wounded kid in all of us responds to them however they learned to. I began to extend compassion towards myself as I forgave myself—long after others have forgiven me—for the ways I’ve acted out in the past. No wonder I felt or reacted that way in that situation! With self-compassion comes a sort of understanding I never thought possible. I’m less of a mystery to myself, and with that sort of knowledge comes the riches of emotional maturity, like the fruit of the spirit described in Galatians.
    Being able to turn inward and meet myself with love helps me to see the best and worst of me in a much fairer light. I’m no longer my worst critic. I’m no longer playing offense against myself. I’m instead learning to love who I am, and who I am becoming. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I’m managing exterior stresses and situations, but I’m getting towards the core of unprocessed emotion I’ve carried for the past 20 years. It wouldn’t have happened this early in my life if not for every opportunity that the insanity of 2020 has given me to feel, process and grow. For all of the bad that has come this year, I’ve found it a necessity to hold onto the good that I’ve found.
    It feels strange to talk about healing and growth with everything going on. It can often feel as though today has enough worries of its own without dredging up the past. Trust me, I get it. But there’s a challenge before us, in the best and worst of times: to extend whatever it is we needed during a traumatic, stressful or painful time in our lives, whether it’s forgiveness, encouragement, or whatever else. Until we allow ourselves to accept that from ourselves and our loved ones, every moment of growth will be stunted, and every success will be met by insecurity and dissatisfaction.
   Another challenge before us, in the best and worst of times is this: how can we, despite the circumstances we find ourselves in return to a hopeful, healthy vision of ourselves, the world and our future in it? That hopeful, healthy vision is nurtured in the soil of the ideas we hold. Our beliefs, the ideas we carry closest to us, shape us. This is why inner work, personal growth, and healing matter. It’s imperative to everything we have done, and will do in the world. Our internal world informs what we do in the outer one. So take care, and be compassionate towards yourself that you may withstand and be better for every moment of life you pass through.