Focusing on what sucks...sucks.
Don’t you always feel better once you speak your truth, name you reality, and purge what is on your soul? I do. It is healthy and healing. We need safe places that model this behavior and encourage us to name our realities.
Your voice is who you are.
It is quite another issue to keep our focus on the problem by diverting our energies and attention to living in the problem rather than living in the solution. Do you live in the problem or do you live in the solution?
When I find myself angry, frustrated, critical, tense, and impatient I am usually living in the problem and not the solution. I noticed that it doesn’t take too much to get my energy focused on what’s wrong with everything.
In my corporate life I trained my staff to bring me solutions, not problems. The temptation is to rush in my office and pronounce, "We’ve got a problem. Charley dropped the ball." (Then one proceeds to tear Charley apart and blame Charley for the huge mess, as if blame will solve the problem.) Rather than saying, "Something came up and here’s a potential solution." It really is easy to get stuck on whom we can blame for our problems.
Have you heard the old saying, "Blame. B.L.A.M.E. Be-lame… don’t be lame"?
This works in my personal life as well. I have to name my reality, but keep the focus on myself. As long as my attention is on the cause my problem or my focus is on blaming and criticizing, I am living in the problem and not the solution.
Did you know that in recovery movement one doesn't heal by focusing on his/her resentments and bitterness, but by acknowledging them and letting them go? In Al-Anon one doesn't heal by "talking about" the alcoholic in his/her life. We have to put the focus on ourselves, and when we start to focus on ourselves we begin to heal.
The same thing can be said for the church. If church sucks so bad for Christians, what will the world think? If our energy is focused on why church sucks and whose fault it is, we are living in the problem and not the solution. May God grant us the grace to look inwardly and change the thing we can… oursleves.
(Thanks Maggi for the seed of inspiration.)
8 Comments:
May I add a resounding AMEN!!! Excellent post! I found you thru a comment you made that intrigued me from bobbie's blog about finding our own voices. Then I clicked over here and found this post. I am elated! In the last 3 years I have been given the gift of my own voice and I received it in Al-Anon. I feel a kindred spirit thing going on here. Keep talking! I'll be back.
Ohhh, dude, you'd better step. Getting a little too close to home there!
Good thoughts, Rick. I agree. But, do you ever get stuck? Where you try to "live in the solution" but you get caught in the tension between the solution and the problem? What then?
mmmm... speaking truth, naming reality, and looking forward with hope... my kind of post!
and pat, i definitely know the stuck place. and for me the first step is just accepting the tension. allowing myself to feel the tension that exists within me (is expressing itself in my body, my thoughts, my emotions) and the granting patience for that which will arise next.
warm regards,
ashley
Nice one, brother. Nailed me in the "nether-regions" again...
As I was reading your post, I was reminded of an image a person in recovery shared with me...of a man walking along, and coming to an open cesspool. And, in the middle of this open lake of sewage, was a man, completely submerged, with only his face and ears exposed. The walker said, "Hey, let me help you out of there!" The submerged man said, "No...actually, I'm OK...just do me a favor and don't make any waves."
God help me, but that's been me, for a while - all too willing to stand in my own crap, when there is always a willing Hand, ready to pull me out. Sometimes I don't move, because I'm afraid of making waves. The thin risk of making things just fractionally worse is more appalling than the chance for change, for cleansing and healing, for recovery.
So yeah, Pat, I know "stuck." Intimately acquainted with it, it seems. Guess I needed to hear this today...
once again, reading your words could not have been more perfectly timed in my life. the spirit moves in strange and wondrous ways. thank you.
That is a great question. I think I often live between the soluton and the problem. It is so much easier to locate the problem, but it requires me being intentional about living in the solution. In business I find it much easier to say, what's the solution, but in my personal life often find it more difficult. I find practicing acceptance of things I am powerless over tends to lead me to living in the solution.
Rick
Very thoughtful post.
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