Grief and Loss

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray[4]

People who study the art of change say that within us lies a lot of ambivalence, even about things we desperately desire to change. This ambivalence is housed in our brain and it makes total sense that our brain would hate change.

The human brain is an amazingly complex organ, but it has one thing in common with my grandfather Bill Murdock. It loves to sit on the porch and smoke a good cigar. The brain loves patterns. It does not much care if its understanding of patterns is actually accurate. It loves to find patterns so that it can take more smoke breaks.

Patterns give the brain the opportunity to go on auto-pilot and catch its breath. My husband, who works from home, sometimes ends up at the gym instead of a scheduled afternoon meeting because he is in the habit of going to the gym in the afternoon as a work break.

If I come home late after a rough day, my brain wants a spoon and a jar of peanut butter because my brain believes that eating peanut butter out of a jar is a wonderful way to deal with stress. It’s paired stress and eating peanut butter and believes it is a pattern my whole being should embrace. But my healthy eating intentions do NOT embrace eating a jar of peanut butter as an after dinner snack. Who wins?

If it is easy and convenient and within reach, the peanut butter wins. My brain is ambivalent about making changes. It liked the old way of dealing with stress it does NOT want to learn new things.

But my brain does not get the final say! Understanding that change is hard and my brain will fight my good intentions at every turn, the peanut butter had to go. Peanut butter is not a bad thing. In fact, it is quite yummy. But I am having to break a bad habit for a good reason.

My brain and I regret the banishment of my little friend peanut butter, but he had to go for a higher purpose.

What do you need to let go of in order to set yourself for transformation? Although we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings and all that heavy lifting is on him, we still have a part to play in the work of change! What’s yours?

No More Excuses

You have led me from my bondage and set me free By all those roads, by all those loving means. That lay within your power and charity.

-Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

Step Seven - humbling asking God to remove our shortcomings - does not waste our time with theories or theology. It provides a plan of action driven by spiritual principles. These principles include: honesty, truth telling about ourselves, accepting personal responsibility, making wrongs as right as we can, and trusting God, not only to support the process but to carry the heaviest of the load.

In fact, the ONLY thing suggested to us in this step is for us to ASK. The rub is in the HOW of asking (humbly) and in the WHAT we are asking God to do for us (remove our shortcomings). Make no mistake - the heavy lifting is done by God, not us. And it is his great pleasure to do so.

Meditation Moment

What would be hard about living a life characterized by humility?

What would be the benefits?

Take a few minutes to sit and ponder, ask God to give you wisdom.

What if failure is

We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

- Marilynne Robinson, Paris Review

How do you deal with the mistakes that you have made that harmed yourself and others? Do you try to forget it happened? Do you blame others or make excuses for yourself? Do you humiliate yourself in a fit of remorse? What part does manipulation play?

What if instead of leaning into our fear of failure and our dread over acknowledging our own fragility and humanity, we took a look at our list of shortcomings (selfishness, self-serving, dishonesty and fear) and thought about what our life would be like if these character flaws were removed by God?

What do you think your life would be like if God were to remove all your shortcomings?

Accidents Happen

I once hosted a dinner party on a fine summer evening. Our guests milled about on our back patio sipping cool, refreshing beverages and plucking tiny appetizers off of fancy trays. Meanwhile, I was in the kitchen trying to set out a buffet spread on our dining room table with such precise timing that the cold foods stayed cold and the hot foods stayed hot.

A dear three-year-old, whom we adore, decided that I needed help, which was true. I was grateful she noticed. I had just placed a generous bowl of cut fruit on the sideboard. She took one look at the crystal punch bowl and glass tongs and that kid found her reason for being. I could hear her murmuring and dragging a chair across the floor but lacked the capacity to investigate. As I pulled blistering hot baked potato casseroles out of the oven I heard a new, louder, murmur from her: “It’s ok, accidents happen! It’s ok, accidents happen!” and indeed one had.

Her best thinking told her that she needed to further toss the fruit. She tossed the fruit alright. Up and over the lip of the bowl the fruit rained down on the table and floor. A strawberry landed in the middle of a green bean casserole. A cantaloupe chunk found its way onto the brisket platter. Meanwhile, she hummed a little tune and delighted herself with her service work.

It was the best moment EVER! This child had learned a lesson most of us are never given or do not have the capacity to receive. Accidents happen and the world continues to rotate. We are human and make mistakes. When we repeat those mistakes over and over again, we discover we have developed a habit that has become a compulsion. We discover that we are constitutionally incapable of NOT making this same mistake time and again. Our shortcomings may result in deeds that are so awful, so big, so UNFORGIVABLE that we do not know what to do.

Do we lean into the humiliation of it all?

Or do we trust in humility? It is OK to understand that accidents happen, it is invaluable that we learn our part in cleaning up the mess.