Month: March 2018

Old dog, new trick

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

I worked on my last blog post, “Choosing Community” for a couple of weeks — drafting, re-drafting, revising, and deleting. It was late Sunday morning, and finally satisfied with what I had written, I decided to publish. During the last hour or so of wordsmithing and fine-tuning, I had noticed a message in the upper right hand corner of my drafting screen; it was in a red font that probably even used the word ‘warning’. I think it said something to the effect that my ‘latest changes hadn’t been saved’. I shrugged it off and clicked the ‘publish’ button. Hm. Nothing happened. Ok, I thought, I guess I’ll refresh the screen, then the ‘publish’ button will surely work.

Click.

Gasp!

My latest changes had really not been saved. (Imagine that!) The last hour or two of work was lost. “I feel sick!” I said out loud. “Why didn’t I copy and paste to Word before I tried to refresh the screen? How am I going to recreate what I had? Why can’t I just slow down once in a while?”

I’ve had many of these kinds of moments in my fifty-two years of life.

So many.

Why didn’t I just look in the rearview mirror before I backed out of the garage into the car that was parked behind me? 

Why didn’t I let the housecleaning wait while I took a short nap? 

Why did I use that tone when I spoke to that child?

Why did I drive in that snowstorm? 

How did I miss that?  What was I thinking?  What is wrong with me?

Sometimes late at night, like tonight, I lie down to try to sleep, and as I close my eyes, I  see a replay of all the missteps and poor choices I have made in my life.  It’s like watching a blooper reel, only I’m not laughing.

Instead, I’m fretting. My heart rate is increasing. I’m finding it hard to breathe.

If only I had _____________, then ___________________.

Over and over and over again.

Why do I punish myself so? Where did I get the idea that I would never make mistakes–that I would be a perfect daughter, friend, mother, wife, employee?  Who told me that every mistake I make would have dire and irrevocable consequences for me and all the people in my life?  I know who — me, that’s who.

I let everything weigh too. darn. much.  I’m still kicking myself for a frustrated comment I made to one of my kids around 2001.  Seriously.

As my therapist says, my expectations of myself are so high, not even I can see them.

So tonight, on the eve of my fifty-second birthday, I am deciding it’s time for a change.  This old dog is about to learn a new trick.

Today and yesterday, as I was driving to and from work, appointments, and errands, I was listening to an episode of the podcast Invisibilia, called “Emotions” (if you’d like to listen to it click here).  The episode discusses a different way to look at emotions (most of which was over my head but some of which was quite healing and liberating).  One liberating part was the idea that emotions are learned and so can be re-learned or re-directed.  The podcast, which cites the research of a professor at Northeastern University, in no way implies that emotions should be stifled or disregarded. (I’ve tried that strategy, thankyouverymuch.)   Instead, it suggests that we often experience emotions in light of constructs that we have been taught or have believed about ourselves or about the world.  For instance, I have, for whatever reason, long held the unspoken belief that I have to be right, even perfect — getting it wrong is unacceptable.  This simple subliminal construct — ‘I need to be right’ — has shaped the way I have experienced failure.  If I miss an item on a test, let down a friend, or break a glass while doing dishes (which I do about once a week), I have failed.  Imagine all the mistakes an average human makes in any given day and you will have a rough estimate of how many times a day I consciously or unconsciously give myself the message that I am unacceptable.

Yeah.  It’s pretty toxic.

Now imagine if I shifted my thinking to be based on the construct that ‘All of life is a series of missteps that provide opportunities for growth.’   If I lived my life based on this construct, I would expect myself to make several mistakes during the day,  and rather than judging or belittling myself, I would instead search around each ‘oops’ for the growth or learning opportunity. I would make no fewer or no more mistakes, I would just have a different emotional experience.  Instead of viewing a torturous blooper reel when I close my eyes,  I might drift off to sleep watching a highlight tape.

Sound too Pollyanna-ish? I don’t think so.  I think it sounds life-changing.

Get this — on Sunday, after I took a few minutes to accept the fact that my ‘final draft’ was evaporated, I sat back down and finished my blog post for the second time.  It didn’t turn out the same as the lost version. As a matter of fact, as I was rewriting, I was still processing my thoughts about community, and I wrote myself to some different ideas than I had in the previous version.  My mistake allowed me an opportunity to think a bit further about my experiences in community.   My ideas had more time to flesh out before I finally hit ‘publish’.

Before I had even listened to the podcast, I had been provided an example of the concept that it was presenting.

Yesterday morning, a friend and I had a quick exchange of text messages which ended with her saying, “I don’t believe in coincidence,” and me responding, “Neither do I.”

This morning my first errand was to drive to a hair appointment before work.  In autopilot, I took the exit that I typically take to work which was not in the direction of the hair salon.  The exit ramp landed me in the middle of a traffic jam.  I was at a juncture — I could belittle myself for not paying attention, or I could lean back in my seat and soak up the podcast. (Yes, I was at that very moment listening to the podcast about shifting mental constructs to allow for different emotional experiences.)   The funny thing is, I knew it was a juncture.  I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “Ok, I guess we’re gonna go this way today.”

It’s a small step toward a huge change.  I am not expecting that I will notice each and every juncture like this. Because mental constructs reside deep beneath the consciousness, they have the power to shape our experience in very subtle ways. I’m going to miss some opportunities; I’m going to make some mistakes.

Nevertheless, I am hoping over time to shift from self-deprecation to tender grace.  It’s gonna take some time, but I do believe this old dog can learn this new trick.

Romans 12:2

“be transformed by the renewing of your mind”

 

 

 

Choosing Community, a re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

On Monday, I wrote about the ways I am witnessing change in Transformational Spaces. This post, written in March 2018 and dusted off for you here, recalls my journey into understanding the power of community.

I can spend days in solitude — reading, writing, working on puzzles, going for long walks.  I love to be alone.

In my childhood, I would retreat to my room to listen to the same song over and over again on a record player, spend hours in the side yard of our house twirling my baton, read away a whole afternoon in the living room recliner, and take solo rides on my bike to the boundaries of the small town I grew up in.

As an adult,  I have looked forward to whatever private moments I have been able to carve out for myself — reading, writing, walking. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends and family with a deep committed love. However, while I enjoy lively family dinners and picnics with friends, I also long to retreat to solitude — sometimes to a fault.

In fact, when the going gets tough — when I am battling interior or exterior demons — I tend to go a little beyond solitude to isolation. If my troubles seem a bit too heavy to bear, I might bunker down in a small cubicle on the top floor of a library every evening for an entire semester, for example. If I’m barely surviving my responsibilities, I might put on a veneer of friendliness over a heavily armored soul before venturing out among the citizenry. I am not quick to reach out; I am sure to turn in.

My husband, on the other hand, is very intentional about connecting with others.  Wherever we have been, he has initiated small group interaction. He believes so strongly in the power of  community that he makes it happen, often in spite of my foot dragging.

“I’d like to start a small group in our house on Saturday nights. Ok?”

“Every Saturday night? Who? Why?“

My introverted self whines and moans, and then I tidy the house, make some food, and open the door. I’m always glad I did, but it is not in my nature to initiate it. I tend toward the solitary.

In St. Louis, we led a small group community that started one Monday night when my husband said, “I invited two guys over tonight. You don’t have to do anything, but I think they are going to come every week.” I sighed and grumbled “every week?” as I quickly kicked shoes into closets and threw dishes into cupboards.

I’d been soldiering internally at the time, and I wasn’t looking forward to anyone getting too close. The thin veneer that I wore into public spaces was tenuous at best. We were a bit of a mess, truth be told, and I didn’t want anyone to see the ugly underbelly of our lives. However, my husband had been pressing for community, so finally, I gave in. What harm could a couple of grad students bring? Certainly we would be caring for them in their struggles, not vice versa. I could easily keep them at arm’s length.

They arrived after dinner — two young single guys who hadn’t eaten. We sat in our living room and chatted, read a few Bible verses, and prayed. At the end of an hour I heard myself telling them to arrive a little earlier the next week; I would have a meal ready for them. Before long, the two grew to about twenty young adults who crammed into our living room every week, eating whatever I happened to scrounge together. Sometimes we had guitar playing and singing, sometimes pranks and laughter, sometimes headier conversations.

At first, I maintained my comfortable food provider/discussion leader role, veneer firmly in place, but those kids had a habit of showing up, petting our dog, talking to our kids, lying around on our floor, and making me laugh that allowed them to worm their way beneath the armor and into my heart. This soldier who marched down school hallways kicking butts and taking names all day long, often went home on Monday nights, made a meal, and then quietly wept as these kids prayed for us — for our lives, for our children, for our health, for our future. When my husband moved to Ann Arbor a year before me, they kept coming to our house every Monday night without fail. They were a constant encouragement and a source of unconditional love. Toward the end, as we were emptying our house for the final move, they lugged furniture, painted walls, and scrubbed floors beside us.

I grieved leaving that group more than anything else that we left in St. Louis. They had taught me the value of community — of sharing life together, of listening to one another’s concerns, of helping to carry one another’s loads. Certainly, I thought, I would never find that kind of connection again.

I was wrong. Since I’ve been in Ann Arbor, I have had plenty of solitude and time for reflection, but I have also repeatedly found myself in close community. I landed in my Bible study battalion almost the minute I got here. Soon after that, I was sweetly surprised by reuniting with a college suite-mate who meets me for mall-walking that often leads to burden-sharing and tear-wiping — right there among the shoppers. A little over a year ago, I started getting out of bed at 6 am twice a month to join four other women for breakfast — we’ve read several books together and have grown close as we’ve discussed how these texts apply to our individual journeys. We are learning together how to be vulnerable, how to support one another, and how to take off our armor in the safe space that we have created.

Additionally, my husband and I have together recently joined a small group with other members of our congregation and are part of a launch team for a new worship service at our church. In each group we are hearing stories, making connections, and finding meaning. We’re leaning in to difficult conversations, we’re praying over one another, and we’re building community.

I am continually overwhelmed by the richness of these relationships — the kind that can see the underbelly with compassion rather than judgment, that can sit in the difficulty rather than searching for solutions, that can both laugh and cry within the space of an hour.

I had learned these lessons earlier in life, to be sure, but in my soldiering years I forgot,  probably because I was so intent on guarding, protecting, and surviving. I didn’t want to let anyone in; I didn’t want them to look under the armor and find out that I was wounded and weak.

Truthfully, it doesn’t always feel pleasant to peel off the armor and expose what’s beneath. I would prefer to keep my unspoken broken* just that, but in the safety of close community, wounds are witnessed, tears are shed, and healing begins. And not just mine.

As it turns out, everyone has their stuff — their unspoken broken — health issues, failed relationships, struggles with work, and money, and time. The surprise to me was that when others saw the pus-filled wounds beneath my armor, they didn’t gag and look away; they leaned in, applied some balm, and showed me their own scars. I didn’t feel judged, but loved.

Building community takes bravery, commitment, and time. It’s worth it, even for a lone soldier like me.

Hebrews 10:25

Continue meeting together, encourage one another.

*Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way

My Sweet Experience, re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 3 Comments

Yes, it’s gushy, but since I just saw Dr. Sugar yesterday, and since he rescued me when I had a significant flare while I was in Utah last week, I decided it was time to polish this post from March 2018 and share the gushing one more time, in June 2019.

As a new volunteer for Patient and Family Centered Care at the University of Michigan, I have been asked to share part of my story at Kellogg Eye Center to a group of new Kellogg employees. What has my patient experience been like?  Since I am more accustomed to writing than to speaking, I thought I’d share what I plan to say here. 

In the summer of 2012, while my family and I were living in St. Louis, MO, I started experiencing joint pain. I had been, up until that time, a full-time teacher, school administrator, mother of four, and avid runner.  I was a very busy woman in excellent shape, so when I first experienced pain in my elbows, I believed I had an overuse injury. However, over the next several months, I began experiencing pain in my hands, feet, neck, and shoulders. The moderate sacroiliac pain and issues with my skin that I had dealt with for most of my adult life intensified. When I began to feel so exhausted at the end of my work day that I couldn’t remember driving myself home, I started the long journey toward a diagnosis — a journey I am still on almost six years later.

You might imagine that this journey has involved visits to my primary care doctor, a rheumatologist, and a dermatologist. Indeed, it has. And, since I’m standing in front of you now, you have probably concluded that my journey has also included ophthalmologists. Correct again.

Throughout 2013 and 2014, my doctors were convinced I had psoriatic arthritis. They had confirmed that I have the genetic marker, HLA-B27, joint pain, and psoriasis.  Although I did not have any inflammatory markers, they agreed that a diagnosis could be given in the absence of such evidence. I was therefore treated with the standard course of medication: NSAIDs, biologics, and other standard pharmaceuticals — certainly I cannot remember everything I have tried.

In the spring of 2014, I was winding up the academic year, one daughter was graduating from college, and another was graduating from high school. I was exhausted and in a significant amount of pain. My rheumatologist decided to treat me with a prednisone taper to give me some relief during this very busy time.

I did experience relief; however, the combination of immunosuppressant drugs and steroids created the perfect environment for ocular herpes. I woke up on Memorial Day 2014 with excruciating eye pain and extreme sensitivity to light, so I called my St. Louis ophthalmologist, Dr. Todd LaPoint. He saw me right away –came into the office before a family picnic – and immediately got me started on a course of medication that got the situation under control. I saw Dr. LaPoint several times over the next few weeks, but then another problem surfaced — I was moving to Ann Arbor at the end of July with a newly diagnosed chronic eye problem. What would I do for care?

Dr. LaPoint said he would do a little research and get me a referral. It wasn’t long before he suggested that I make an appointment with Dr. Sugar at Kellogg Eye Center. He had attended a talk that Dr. Sugar had given and knew he was the best of the best.

Dr. Alan Sugar

I remember quipping, “Dr. Sugar? I wonder if he is sweet.”

Dr. LaPoint replied, “He is!”

Almost four years later, I have visited Kellogg more than twenty times, and I must say that Dr. Sugar is indeed sweet — one of the sweetest — and that Kellogg has been an oasis as I have wandered the desert of my medical journey.

I will certainly not recount twenty office visits for you, but I do have a few highlights I would like to share.

When you saw me walk up to the podium this evening, you might not have expected that I have battled chronic pain and fatigue. In fact, if you ran a battery of tests on me right now, you would find virtually no clinical evidence that I suffer. Patients like me often meet health care providers who believe that there is nothing wrong with us. We are hypochondriacs, pill-seekers, and whiners. Even well-intentioned doctors shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t have anything to offer you.” Time after time we walk into doctors’ offices with concerns and questions, and we leave feeling humiliated and defeated. Because we have experienced this so often, we often walk into doctors’ offices with our defenses up.  We expect to be judged, dismissed, and disappointed.

Since I’ve moved to Ann Arbor, doctors at U of M and St. Joseph’s have removed my psoriatic arthritis diagnosis.  One doctor says I have fibromyalgia; the other says I have degenerative arthritis. Frustrated with the confusion I experience from this continually changing diagnosis, I discontinued the biologics and anti-inflammatory medications and spent a year trying out homeopathic remedies. Finally, after years of trial and error, I am currently on a path that seems to be working — physical therapy, chiropractic care, lifestyle changes, and steroid injections. I’m just a few months into the first significant relief I’ve had since 2012.

In the midst of that long season of struggle, I have had one recurrence of ocular herpes and  two rounds of scleritis.  Both of these illnesses are quite uncomfortable, so one day when I felt a slight change in my left eye, I called Kellogg and arranged to see Dr. Sugar. When he entered the examination room he said, “How are you doing?” I answered, “I may have jumped the gun, but I just feel like something is wrong with my eye.” I was already putting up my defenses, expecting Dr. Sugar to be like many other doctors I have seen; I could already imagine him saying  ‘there’s nothing wrong with my eye’.  However, he didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “I always want you to come in, whether we find something or not. If you think something is wrong, I want to see you.”

It may have been during that same appointment, or it may have been at another one, when he examined my eyes and said, “I don’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean you are not experiencing anything.”  This may seem insignificant to you who practice medicine, but to those of us who suffer with invisible illnesses, finding a doctor who does not dismiss our complaints or deny our reality is rare and life-impacting.

In January of 2017, my husband and I were planning for a trip to Israel.  Because I had recently struggled with a round of scleritis, I was concerned about traveling abroad. What if I had a flare in Israel?  When I mentioned my concern to Dr. Sugar, he pulled out a pad of paper and wrote the name of a colleague– a cornea specialist — who practices in Tel Aviv. He assured me that if I had a problem, I should contact that doctor and he would be able to help me.

One weekend last spring, I woke up on a Saturday morning with pain in my eye. I immediately called Kellogg. The on-call doctor opened my file and said, “I see you are a patient of Dr. Sugar. He likes to be called whenever one of his patients has trouble on the weekend. Let me try to reach him, and I will call you back later today.” Not fifteen minutes passed before my phone rang. The on-call doctor had already spoken to Dr. Sugar who had given him a message to convey to me: directions for how to proceed over the weekend and the message that a prescription was waiting at my pharmacy.

Surely you agree that Dr. LaPoint’s recommendation was spot on.

Let me just take a moment and share one other layer. I am a life-long educator. I have had students of all ages from early childhood up through college. One extra joy I experience at Kellogg is the mentorship I witness. While some patients may be annoyed that a resident or an intern is in the room, I love witnessing the interchange of Dr. Sugar with these future-specialists. His approach is intentional — I have seen him be encouraging with one resident and direct with another. I have watched him peer through one side of a dual-microscope while a resident peers through the other.  He listens to the ‘student’ describe what he sees and points out anything he has missed. It’s quite phenomenal to witness. I have remarked to more than one resident that they are quite privileged to learn from such a distinguished physician. I do recognize that his standards are high, and that working under his supervision may not be easy, but I believe the experience they are getting just standing in the room with him all day long is among the best training they could receive in the nation.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that along with Dr. Sugar I have received care from others within his office including Dr. Shtein and many fellows.  Each time I have received quality intentional care that leaves me feeling heard and understood. I have not had one bad experience.  This is uncommon.

I have visited many health facilities in the past six years — both in St. Louis and in Ann Arbor.  I have met numerous health care professionals.  Kellogg is at the top of my list of a very few places that I actually look forward to visiting to receive care.  Please continue this tradition of excellence as you join the Kellogg staff.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is within your power to act. –Proverbs 3:27

Surprise! Re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment
Click to listen.

It’s Sunday morning, and I already know that my work schedule is so packed this week that I won’t have time to write a new post. I’m a little anxious — how will I make it through? will I get sick? will I become irritable? I’ve not even stepped into the week, and my adrenaline is already flowing. In an attempt to calm myself down, I found this post from March 2018. It reminds me that while I am bracing myself for a stressful week, I just might be pleasantly surprised.

Today I was getting ready to do a lesson with one of my students when our office manager informed me that one of my coworkers had gone home sick. Would I mind combining two students’ instruction — one, a nine-year-old doing language arts and one, an eleven-year-old who had a math assessment to finish? Two students at once might not sound like a lot, but both of these students have specific learning needs and both typically receive one-on-one instruction. I answered that I would be happy to combine them while thinking to myself, “well, this could get interesting”.

It is for good reason that most of our students receive one-on-one instruction. They have all struggled in school and have the scars to show for it — low self-esteem, a tendency toward frustration, and the constant and desperate need for encouragement.  How was I going to juggle their needs? No way to find out but to step into it.

I was almost immediately surprised. “Hey you two,” I said, “Why don’t we find a space with a large table so that we have plenty of room?” “Yeah!” they said almost in unison.  While a change in routine or venue can sometimes signal distraction or disruption, they surprised me by rallying and seeing this as an opportunity. They helped me gather all their supplies — laptops, files, paper, etc — and we relocated so swiftly that I barely had time to register the change.

Still, I was cautious. I wondered if we would get anything done at all. Both of these students tend to need a lot of direction and re-direction; I pictured an hour plunked between them, dividing my time between getting each of them back on task and squeezing in little spurts of instruction. 

Again, I was surprised. The eleven-year-old almost immediately located the online assessment that he had to complete and announced that he could do most of it on his own. The nine-year-old found herself a “special pen” to work with and then, looking at her ‘classmate’, decided to find him one, too. “What a good idea!”  I said. Her classmate received the pen, said “Thank you!” and got right to work.

While I guided the nine-year-old through her lesson, the eleven-year-old worked diligently on adding and subtracting fractions. He politely asked me once if he had reduced the fraction as far as it could go. After I checked his answer and said,  “yes, good job,” I turned back to the other student. She looked at him and added her own “good job!”  When the older student heard me tell the younger student, “You got it,” he chimed in with “Way to go!”

Guys, I did not script this. They were genuinely delighted for one another. He watched her jump up and down when she heard two target words in a song that I played. She waited patiently when he and I worked through a more difficult problem together. They even teamed up to good-naturedly poke fun at my singing ability! I praised them and rewarded them for their cooperative spirits and strong work ethics, but I truly believe that the opportunity to work side-by-side was a reward in itself.

The three of us were elbow to elbow smiling at one another at a table buried under two laptops, paper, pens, scissors, and scraps. I said, “Hey, guys, I think we should do this more often.  What do you think?”

“Yes!” they agreed, in unison.

If you are not a teacher, you might not know that school doesn’t always go like this.  Classmates aren’t always encouraging toward one another. They certainly don’t always celebrate the small accomplishments of students with learning differences. In fact, it is often the opposite. Students who struggle often have the added discouragement of being teased by their peers and even, I’m sorry to say, their teachers.

Not today.

Today was a sweet surprise.  Perhaps these two who have struggled so much have learned the value of being kind. I learned a little myself.

Surprise!

Isaiah 11:6

“a child will lead them”

I just checked my schedule for the day — seven hours of my day will be spent in one-on-one instruction with students, for one hour I’ll meet with a small group online, and for one hour I’ll score the writing of online students. It’s gonna be a full day, but I’m going to try to enjoy the ride. Who knows? I just might get surprised.

The Occasion, revisit

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

This post, first written March 2018 and updated February 2019, is further exploration of the topic, the process.

As a student, I hated group assignments. I dreaded the moment when a teacher would put me with two or three other students and give us a task to accomplish. I would groan, shoot the instructor a micro-glare, and reluctantly join the others who were equally ‘enthusiastic’. Why did I hate it so much? Was it because every group has a slacker and I hated the imbalance of effort? Or was it the fact that I would have to approach a problem in a way that I was unfamiliar with? Because if a teacher gave me a page of math problems, I could fly through them pretty quickly and end up with fairly accurate results. If I had to answer comprehension questions on a chapter in US History, no problem. Zip, zap, zoop. However, if a task involved more complexity and I had to sit in that complexity with a group of people who approached problems in different ways than my slam and jam method, that was uncomfortable for me. I didn’t like it.

You might think that as teacher I have avoided assigning group work because it made me so uncomfortable as a student. Not true. It’s been a bit of a psycho/social experiment for me to watch my students obediently trudge from their desks to the groups that I have put them in. The ones who are like me grab the paper and just ‘get it done’, huffing and rolling their eyes the whole time. They are missing the point — just like I was.

Often learning is not about the product, but about the process.

Teachers don’t put students into groups so that they can find the answers.    Teachers put students into groups so that they can witness the processes of other people and so that their own processes might be refined.

In my current position, I am working with two students on a course of elementary science. One student is a nine-year-old who is sitting beside me in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has pretty dramatic difficulty with reading and paying attention. The other student is an eight-year-old with less dramatic learning challenges who is sitting in front of a laptop in London, England.  We meet every day from 10-11am EST, which is 3-4pm in London. As you can imagine, this arrangement requires involved technology, elaborate communication, and creative scheduling. Why go to all this trouble for two little girls? We go to all this trouble because — and I have witnessed this first hand — the girls learn better together than they do apart. Not only that, they share their lives with each other — tales of pet cats, horseback riding, and learning accomplishments. They giggle together as they squish clay to discover the properties of a solid, pour water to measure the volume of a liquid, and watch a steaming kettle to see a gas. They are learning about science, yes, but they are also learning how to learn and that the process of learning does not always have to be drudgery.

As a student, I was always pretty good at learning. Give me the problems; I’ll find the answers. I could figure things out on my own, thank you very much.

I’m writing about this like it’s ancient history, but as you might’ve already guessed, not much has changed. I still think my systems are working pretty well. Give me a problem; I’ll try to find a solution. Slam, jam. I don’t go out of my way to find the refining process, nevertheless, it finds me.

Recently, our pastor, Gabe Kasper, in a message titled “The Healer”, referred to Kirkegaard’s, ‘occasion’. The ‘occasion’ is any moment in which we meet a challenge to our preferred way of thinking and living that produces personal transformation.

I am not a fan of such ‘occasions’.  I do not like change, perhaps because in order to change I have to acknowledge that my system wasn’t the best one after all. My slam and jam method of getting assignments done wasn’t (isn’t) really teaching me anything other than how to check off boxes. It wasn’t (isn’t) allowing me the space to sit in the complexity of a problem. My box-checking was (is) productive, but not transformative.

I recently picked up Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. Just few pages into the introduction, I found myself face to face with ‘the occasion’ — a challenge to my preferred way of thinking and living. I had grabbed the book in the middle of a sleepless night, so I faced a choice at 2am — step into this transformational space or put the book down and forget I ever saw it.

I stepped in.

Taylor’s premise is that we are conditioned from childhood to avoid dark spaces.  Our parents tell us to come into the house when the streetlights come on — We have night lights beside our beds. We know where the emergency flashlight is for when the power goes out. When things go dark — literally and metaphorically — we rush to grab a light. My approach to getting caught in the dark is similar to my approach to math problems–I quickly find a solution. I turn on a light. Taylor suggests a different approach. What if, she says, we sit in the dark spaces for a while? What if we acknowledge the complexity of difficult situations instead of rushing to find solutions? After all, she says, “when, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life (literally or figuratively, take your pick), plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water, nonetheless I have not died…Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again” (5).

I have another student who reminds me of me. He wants my help super-fast so that he can score well on the test and get a good grade on the paper. I sometimes get frustrated with him. I say, “I know you want a good grade on the test, but I am more concerned that you fully understand the concepts.” He sometimes blurts back, “What? You don’t care if I do well on the test?” I do. I do care about his test, but life has taught me that the test will be over in a blink; the lesson might matter for much longer. If we don’t master the concept, we are going to have to revisit it over and over until we finally have it.

Like my student, I want a super-fast solution to my problems. I don’t know why, because each time I find a solution to one problem, another one takes its place as though it had been waiting in the wings. I continually find myself standing in the dark.

In fact, at this very moment, I (and maybe you) face several circumstances that are pretty dark. I would really like to turn on some lights, clean up some messes, and make everything perfect. However, I’ve been using that system for most of my adult life, and I’m beginning to see that it’s a flawed strategy. So, I’m going to take this occasion. I’m going to get comfortable here and just observe the space. I’m hoping that “the things I learn” here will “save my life over and over again.”

And guess what — I’m not approaching this lesson alone. I’ve assigned myself to a group project. I’ve asked a few of my dear friends to join me because I know that although it’s not my preferred way of learning — I’d rather hunker down and check off all the boxes myself — they have different approaches that I can learn from. What’s more is that they are willing to sit in the complexity with me for a while — not trying to turn on lights and clean up messes, but just sit and observe and learn from the dark.

The people remained at a distance,while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

Exodus 20:21