Giving Up What, again?
This one..I'm not even sure I want to post about it, except that I don't want to forget about it later, so I need someplace "permanent" for it. So.
On the way home on Thursday, I started thinking about Giving Up Stuff For Lent, and how we do that to give up something important to us and so forth and so on.
And then I realized that there's a lot of stuff I'd be way better off giving up that I was hanging on to, so I talked to God about it. I suppose you could say I prayed about it, but there was nothing remotely like the normal prayers we think of. It really was a chat. One sided, obviously, I mean really, see the URL, but still a chat.
And what I "got" out of our chat is that I've been hanging onto misery. Yes, I'm not happy about my job, the commute sucks, being away from home and so on still blows. I'm still not "yay, I get to go live away from my family for another week!" But...I also don't need to be dwelling on my misery, how sucky things are, and so on. It's not a "focus on the positive" so much as it is "give up the negative".
So...I did. Sorta.
Look, I think Visualization is, for the most part, crap. That business about standing in front of a mirror and telling yourself how fabulous you are and fiercely concentrating and picturing yourself with all the Worldly Things You Want and if you do it hard enough and long enough and right enough then you'll Get What You Need To Be Completely Happy is, not to put a fine point on it, crap. You can't align the planets into Making Your Cancer Go Away, or Making You A Multimillionaire In A Month by concentrating. Not gonna happen.
But really, Visualization is the only way I can describe what happened. I thought about it, pictured me next to a Gigantic God Hand, and I had blocks in my hand labeled things like "depression", "Worry" and "Fear". And I took each of those blocks and set them in the God Hand, and slowly let go of them. Any time over the weekend I felt myself getting depressed, worried or fearful, I did it again. And you know..it actually seems to work. I'm giving it up for Lent - and hopefully for good.
Not to say that I won't ever be depressed or worried or frustrated, because that's just stupid. I'm not turning into some weird Stepford Lutheran. But at the same time, I'm also not hanging on to my misery any more. We'll see how that works out.
On the way home on Thursday, I started thinking about Giving Up Stuff For Lent, and how we do that to give up something important to us and so forth and so on.
And then I realized that there's a lot of stuff I'd be way better off giving up that I was hanging on to, so I talked to God about it. I suppose you could say I prayed about it, but there was nothing remotely like the normal prayers we think of. It really was a chat. One sided, obviously, I mean really, see the URL, but still a chat.
And what I "got" out of our chat is that I've been hanging onto misery. Yes, I'm not happy about my job, the commute sucks, being away from home and so on still blows. I'm still not "yay, I get to go live away from my family for another week!" But...I also don't need to be dwelling on my misery, how sucky things are, and so on. It's not a "focus on the positive" so much as it is "give up the negative".
So...I did. Sorta.
Look, I think Visualization is, for the most part, crap. That business about standing in front of a mirror and telling yourself how fabulous you are and fiercely concentrating and picturing yourself with all the Worldly Things You Want and if you do it hard enough and long enough and right enough then you'll Get What You Need To Be Completely Happy is, not to put a fine point on it, crap. You can't align the planets into Making Your Cancer Go Away, or Making You A Multimillionaire In A Month by concentrating. Not gonna happen.
But really, Visualization is the only way I can describe what happened. I thought about it, pictured me next to a Gigantic God Hand, and I had blocks in my hand labeled things like "depression", "Worry" and "Fear". And I took each of those blocks and set them in the God Hand, and slowly let go of them. Any time over the weekend I felt myself getting depressed, worried or fearful, I did it again. And you know..it actually seems to work. I'm giving it up for Lent - and hopefully for good.
Not to say that I won't ever be depressed or worried or frustrated, because that's just stupid. I'm not turning into some weird Stepford Lutheran. But at the same time, I'm also not hanging on to my misery any more. We'll see how that works out.
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