It’s been a very big week! Honestly, I’m not sure whether to be frustrated or encouraged. I started the week by working through the weekend at the hospital (exhausting), going through meetings and patients all week (busy), visiting with friends from out of town (fun), and resolving conflict with my husband (emotional).  I really wasn’t sure whether I would even write a post this week. But I keep hearing that quiet voice saying that I need to write down and share what I’m learning.  Why? It could be because someone else needs to hear that they are not alone, that someone else is working through their journey too. Maybe writing this blog is just a good creative outlet for me.  But I think it’s bigger than that. I believe that this is part of God moving me ahead, growing and preparing me (and you!) for what’s next.

 

 

I’m going to share what happened for me this week. Your week may have been totally different from mine, but I bet you’ll see some similarities. Some of what I experienced was good and fun, and some was deep and hard, so while it’s a little tough to share, I will because it may help as you work through the things happening for you…

 

The week started working overnight at the hospital Sunday night into Monday morning. I got more sleep than I expected, so I was giddy with relief when I drove to the farmer’s market to get the groceries. After shopping I drove by the kids’ homeschool group and kissed them good morning, I took the groceries home and unpacked. Then I went to do some life coaching/energy work with my coach, and things were looking good. You know the term “inner child”? Well, I’m learning more about mine through my energy work. I call her my “spirit girl”. I didn’t think I even had one – I just remember always wanting to be an adult! But she’s in there and she remembers things I’d rather pretend didn’t happen. Hurtful and painful things from long ago. But Monday she was happy and looking for fun! I was looking forward to a short week at work and it seemed like the road ahead was clear.

 

 

You know, when God is moving you ahead in your life, a smooth path doesn’t always take you to the next level, right? We’d like to think that the road to the next thing is straight and smooth. But that isn’t necessarily the case. Sometimes, hard and painful things can peel back layers faster than the easy times. Challenges are giving you work to do. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when some conflict showed up.

 

Perry and I are trying to raise our four kids as many people are: intentionally. We are hoping to improve on the good work our parents put into us, and that requires lots of thought, energy and prayer. But, we grew up differently and have different points of view on what we see in our kids, and how we should deal with those things. We are completely unified in our core beliefs. But working out those beliefs in the details of our lives (especially with raising the kids) can cause big conflict.

If you have kids older than six, you probably will find this familiar. My oldest has started being “deaf” when we call her, or slow to respond when asked to do something. It’s absolutely a passive-aggressive response to being told to do something she’d rather not do, or to being interrupted from something she’d rather be doing. It aggravates us and her teacher-nanny (who is with her during the day), and we both recognize this is a character issue that we have to train out of her. Shoot, I’m more than 30 years older than she is and I resort to passive-aggressive behavior sometimes! That’s bad… I know it. I’m working on it.

Anyway, I came to Perry at the end of a tough day at work (for him) to share an incident that went down with her earlier that day. Maybe I should have waited for a better moment.  I didn’t. In the course of the conversation, we didn’t see eye to eye and ended up at odds. We couldn’t come together that night, but were able to make up and be united again in the morning. But I was still very sensitive about it.

 

 

Later that night, we went to church and the class was on conflict resolution. You see what was happening? Movement… In the course of the class, Perry shared with the group about how he sees relationships as volatile and “like diffusing a bomb”. He didn’t mean me specifically, but I thought that of course, he had to mean me. I’m his closest and most volatile relationship, right? I felt so small. My spirit girl shrank down in a dark corner of my heart. See, deep down, I have a hard time believing that I’m lovable. I think I’m hard to like and get along with, so if I think I hear my husband say that I’m difficult, then it is confirmation for a shameful thing I already believe about myself.

 

Up to this point, I’d been working – meditating, praying, listening, journaling. But now I needed to put in some real work, to practice what I’d been learning. So what did I do? I prayed and cried. Man, I hate crying! But for me, it often is part of the process of working through. I sat still and meditated and listened to my spirit girl. Then I shared how I felt with Perry and my coach. I did some yoga and I danced, because my spirit girl misses music and dance. Dancing was a huge part of my life until I finished college, then the demands of medical school overwhelmed me and dance lost out. Then I kept checking in, meditating and sending loving energy to her. I also asked for what I needed, like a long hug from Perry. That helped too!

 

 

So where’s the good stuff? What happened from this painful, shameful experience that’s worth talking about here? Here it is: I can see my spirit girl! I went from not recognizing that she was there and ignoring her, to knowing she’s there. I’m also learning that she knows some things I need that I’ve forgotten about or left behind. I can see her. I can hear her guiding me to giving a full expression of ME, the me I’m here to be. It’s hard for me though, because she’s sensitive and emotional and intuitive and loud sometimes and I love those things, but I’ve spent most of my adult life creating a serious, powerful and controlled persona without her. She’s shaking things up for me and that’s not comfortable. But it’s part of the process.

Growth isn’t always comfortable, but it’s good. I’m learning to see the good in the discomfort and in the pain, even when the pain seems small and ordinary and ought to be ignored. We think that our feelings are weaknesses and that we should brush them off as annoyances. But we can use these small hurts to practice, to prepare for the big joys and hurts ahead. When we allow ourselves to fully experience the painful times and work through them, we can also fully experience the good times. We can live the full expression of the life we have! And that is the process, that is the journey…

 

On the journey…

How do you work through the hurts in your life? Have you left behind some of your true self? Please share in the comments below…