I’m stuck, and it feels messy.
It’s 3:30 AM in South Carolina where I’m husband and I landed last night. I’m sure we’re still on CA time, but I would really like to change with the time so that I can visit and function efficiently.
I finally got out of bed aware that I’m better off awake than I am tossing. I wanted to share a quick transparent thought with you and realized I was feeling bound by Instagram’s word limit. I used to write A LOT when I was younger. Now I don’t and when I do, I feel restricted, I feel fear of judgment, I feel concerned my voice won’t be heard or understood. I feel a lot of things. And know a lot of things... and as I teach you... feelings are facts. We can know whatever we want, but it won’t dictate our choices or actions, our FEELINGS will. So what’s my point... I know to share, to be me, to write, to connect, even if only one person is encouraged.
I also know that when my neck begins to ache the way it has been, it’s not physical, it’s very, VERY emotional. I‘m aware of the secular emotional roots to disease, aware of the Spiritual Roots to disease (which are almost identical by the way) and I understand to some extend the physiology of our body and that we are mind, body & spirit and it requires all three to be tended to for us to be, WHOLE.
As the pain in my neck and head have persisted over the last few days, I’m challenged myself to care for my own self the way that I would for you. I’ve asked myself what my body really needs. I’ve tapped, I’ve given myself rest and time. I read a book (I never read actual whole books). I even left home for an adventure with my husband who by the grace of God (truly!) is my very bet friend and I couldn’t be more excited to travel across country with him. The reason is to move my dad back with us, but Mike has a way of making everything more fun. He protects me, loves me, inspires me, educates me, and motivates me. He is totally and completely a resting place for me-I have NO friction with my husband-sheer joy to be on this half work, half fun trip with him.
So why’s does my head hurt? Why does my neck hurt? Why do I feel STUCK? So I’ve asked myself this question, I’ve spent time in prayer. I’ve vented to Mike about my frustrations and while I don’t have all the answers YET, I know that this stuckness isn’t permanent.
It’s for something and I’’m not stuck from scratch, I’m stuck from experience and this is NOTHING like before. I only kind of know what I wanted to say here tonight, but already I’ve been reminded that where I’m at emotionally, is where SO many of my clients have expressed being lately. My eyes are open. My heart is open. I know who I am and WHOSE I am. I’m alive, I’m driven. I pulled the plank from my eye so that I could pull the speck from yours... I’m “Un-Stuck”. So why do I feel stuck? Well, let me just ramble because it’s my 3:30AM hour, and I don’t want to be restricted by word limits-if one of you connects with this, then my heart will feel even more full, but please do share.
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This place I’m in reminds me of the work I do with you. if you’re not a client, then I’m referring to “my girls”, my clients, my PASSION. We work through layer upon layer of your life’s journey to uncover who you were created to be. You get to give voice to feelings to pain caused to you that have been seeping out of you, causing pain for those AROUND you. Because broken people break things. What you KNOW becomes more real. You begin to release judgment, accusation, you begin to accept yourself and others as well as FORGIVE yourself and others almost EFFORTLESSLY. It’s a miracle to me every time. You become more powerful, more gentle, less empathetic and more apathetic. You begin to know what is yours to hold, and what isn’t. You learn that when you are FULL, you can LOVE better those around you. You feel more FREE. You begin to gain more strength, more courage, more identity and as you do you want to INSPIRE, ENCOURAGE, speak truth, practice new boundaries and suddenly when someone else isn’t on the same page, or circumstances around you don’t go as planned-you freeze. Your neck hurts, your head hurts, your heart hurts and it can FEEL as though your work is undone, or was never had. You, WE, become plagued with self doubt and suddenly don’t feel so “healed”, or “strong”.
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The work you’ve done is DONE. It IS NOT WASTED. The work I’ve done is DONE, it’s why I’m here, it’s why you’re here. We did it. So why do we suddenly feel afraid, raw, exposed, weak, doubtful? Well, I have 1,000 reasons. I hope I can break some down for you.
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I think it’s something like 10,000 hours or 10,000 tries needed to “master” something (someone who read the book the Outliers can tell me what’s accurate). So think of something you’ve mastered even if it’s cleaning your kitchen or folding laundry. Anything. if I asked you to write a post about it, write out instructions for how to do it or explain the steps verbally, you could, right? CONFIDENTLY, right? Right. Because you’ve put in A LOT of time on it.
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When a baby is crawling and begins to try to walk, he starts messy right? he tries his first step and falls. What his subconscious does is INCREDIBLE. It works FOR HIM (not against him (yet). With each mis-step, his brain calculates what he did, and what he could do DIFFERENTLY in order to succeed the next time. EVEN THOUGH crawling is more comfortable and more familiar, he WANTS to do something different, something more challenging, something “better”. Unlike us, un-ashamed and without fear a baby just keeps trying and each stumble is recorded by the brain and the brain sends a signal to the child with how to “do better next time”. Eventually he walks without falling. Of course until later when he’s walking home from school with his friends, talking and playing with a ball. There’s a shallow curb or break in the sidewalk and he trips-that’ll confuse him, maybe upset him and throw him off. His friends might make fun of him, he might wonder what’s wrong with him and feel embarrassed. After all, he DID learn how to walk, didn’t he? Were his 10,000 tries toward walking WASTED? No. He still knows EXACTLY how to walk. Especially if it’s ALL he’s doing. He just hasn’t MASTERED walking while talking and playing with a ball. He was actually doing three things he’s learned all at the same time. Pretty victorious compared to the little guy who could hardly Take 1 step. He hadn’t walked, talked and played on un-even ground enough times for him to MASTER it. So, did he fail at walking? Or was he actually doing MORE than he’d ever done before, all at the same time, and just mis-stepped? Something snuck up and got him. It wasn’t his fault, we can’t always plan for small hurdles or cracks. Of course, sometimes no matter how many times we try something, we error. We’re human, it happens and we have GOT to learn to give ourselves some GRACE!.
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With this weird “pandemic” upon us, I know that for the first time, for MANY of us, we finally FEEL the same as one another, at the same time. My favorite quote during this was by Steven Furtick “We’re all in the same storm, different boats”. Regardless of our personal circumstances, most of us feel a loss of control, uncertainty, doubt and unfortunately a divide among our own peers, and often family too. These are all NORMAL feelings when someone has done a lot of work on themselves, and then a curb pops out of nowhere causing them to stumble. They question themselves, their progress. YOU question yourself, your progress. Through this, ALL our lives are changed, On hold in some way, we all have different stories but our feelings are very much the same.
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So, why, when we’ve come so far, do we feel like we’ve made NO progress?
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Again, lots more reasons. The subconscious REALLY helped us learn to walk. I believe we are wired for love/joy and we LEARN fear. Our subconscious also keeps track of wrongs DONE to us, things that HURT us and caused us to feel “un-safe” or afraid. When hurt, it scans our surroundings and takes note of the people, the place, the details and vowels to protect us from EVER feeling unsafe like that again. This means when the kids laugh at us for falling, maybe it no longer feels safe to be in a group. It means when dad yells at us, we learn dad’s not safe. When the mean girl on the playground makes fun of us, we learn than girls aren’t safe. The list goes on, and the list gets very VERY serious, as you know.
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So, when I had moments to rest and think the last few days, about half of those moments were taken over with thoughts of frustration, leading me to be inspired to share, followed by feelings of doubt. All learned by how I’ve been treated by people who misunderstood me. There is no amount of tapping or praying or strategizing I can do to be understood by ALL people. Nothing I can do to be understood by someone who is committed to misunderstanding me-or just committed to misunderstanding people in general.
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So, we’ve got the subconscious working against us, we’ve got our own FEELINGS working against us that cause us to think that we’re starting all over again when in reality, we’ve learned to juggle really well, 10 things at once. When at the start of our journey we could hardly juggle one. It’s the FEELING of dropping a ball, or tripping over a curb that causes us to believe we’ve erred, we’ve FAILED, and we are NO GOOD. Why so hard to give ourselves credit for how far we’ve come?
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I’ve got an AWESOME practical tool for that I’ll share at the end so I don’t derail here too much. So, back to my question, “Regardless of how far we’ve come, why do we feel STUCK when something is out of our control, or doesn’t go as we planned?” Because the FEELING is the same FEELING as failure in your past. Only this isn’t THAT failure all over again, it’s a NEW “failure” or err. A NEW learning curve from EXPERIENCE, not from scratch. You’ve learned to juggle many things, you’re doing great, you’ve come so far. People and life and circumstances threw you off before your journey, don’t let them throw you off NOW. There will always be circumstances outside of our control, There will always be things that don’t go according to planned. So what if we stop acting shocked, and remember that, that’s LIFE, but that we’ve learned to juggle so many new wonderful things. That we’ve come so far, that now when we gets thrown off, we know what it feels like to be back “ON“ course so now we can hop back on the sidewalk and walk-we don’t need to stay... STUCK, we just need to stay reminded and encouraged to be willing to continue to learn, and grow. Once we’ve overcome so much, we will be equipped for greater things-those greater things we have never mastered before, for we weren’t prepared, we hadn’t done the work. With each new step, new victory, there WILL be new opportunities, new challenges and they will likely ALWAYS FEEL as difficult as that first step, because after all, you ARE taking a first step, but it’s a new one, a harder one and this time you take that step from EXPERIENCE, fully aware that you WILL fall, you WILL fail, you WILL stumble and you WILL give yourself permission to learn it-for there is no way to master something you have never done.
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I’ve never done what has been impressed upon my heart this week. I have never WRITTEN what God is asking me to write. I’ve never SHARED what I feel lead to share. If I trust the process, if I trust myself, and my creator, then I WILL share. I remember the past, but it won’t cause me to live in fear or silence my voice. As I remember the rejection, I also remember the acceptance. I remember that SOME people DO seek understanding and mutual acceptance, REGARDLESS of differences. I remember that by becoming un-stuck, I was able to meet you where you’re at and lift you up from where I was. I WILL be rejected, I WILL be misunderstood. I WILL be judged. I will. It happens at every NEW step of growth and maturity, only this time I know it-I will not be shocked. And.. I can’t only KNOW this, I have to take action, I have to take a step, I have to MOVE to get Un-Stuck at this step.