The Journey into Love

Survive & Thrive to Fight Stress and Disease

This is just a note to introduce this category on the Journey into Love blog--Stress Management & Survival. Here's the bottomline for now (with much more to come soon): our ability to fend off disease is actually boosted by rich, loving relationships and placed more at risk by toxic relationships. In this category we will link you to articles and resources to help you manage stress. For now, here's a question: "Where does your biggest stress come from...and what helps YOU most to relieve stress?

Peace (and relaxation!) to you.
Jim M.

Lil' Ella: laughing, lamenting, and the healing journey

I don't know about you, but a few decades ago, life got really Serious and I spent so much time there (in Serious) that I couldn't find my way back to IgnoranceisBlissville. Mapquest didn't help abit: I got this P.I.A. response back that said something like: "Sorry. Please indicate a street or intersection".

So how do we regain that childlike delight about life when so much crap has come down that it seems more "genuine" to be cynical and wait-out life, hunkered in the bunker with our heads covered and tin helmets on?

This morning at MasterCare, my clinic in Petoskey,there was this little sprite girl, maybe 3 at most, but what a miniLifeforce she was. This was "Ella", a sturdy lil urchin who, amidst a waiting room of nervous and struggling adults, floated, with eyes closed, a serene smile on her face, arms outstretched, fingers extended but so relaxed that each one waved as she slowly spun around and bounced gently up and down-- like a little horse on an old fashioned carousel: it was as if she was stirring the angst out of the air with a wordless incantation. Pretty sweet huh? Then, when she caught me watching her, delighted, as i stirred my coffee from the adjoining kitchen, she opened her eyes and stuck out her tongue and made this big farting sound that overwhelmed the classical music she'd been dancing to. The adults were aghast.  It was perfect.

How seriously we had all been taking ourselves: not just the clients, but the therapists too --as if we shouldn't dare laugh outloud or breath too deep till all was right in our worlds. That is so understandable on the one hand (especially since a therapist's lobby is kinda like the entry to a mash unit). But it is also really unfortunate. I mean, exactly when will all be right in my world? Maybe tomorrow...for an hour...maybe a day or a few. If i am lucky; Maybe in your world on Wednesday--for the day, or maybe for a week. But what are the odds that all will be well in your world AND mine in the same entire week?

So, should we say that Ella's flight of fancy was really only possible because she doesn't know any better yet? Was her carefree suspension in space and time, being taken up by the music and her freedom, only something afforded children young enough to still dance in delusions of safety until inevitable realities crash their party?

(Warning: I am gonna use the "J" word here --Jesus: I hope you won't be offended. But hey, this is my blog, right? ...where you get to be you, and I get to be me. So, okay, anyhow...) Jesus said two things i think are really cool and fit here: First he said (My paraphrase): "Unless you come to me like one of these little children, you can't come to me at all". Then he said, "for such as these (children) is the Kingdom of God." So, there must be some special attributes within children not yet distorted that Jesus wants adults  to reclaim if they are to find real Life.

What are those attributes? Well, I'm guessing one was the child-like ability to simply BE in the moment; to attend to that which is beautiful--like the beauty of music, or the breeze, or some small love gesture, without pushing it away for more "important adult things", like enough Stuff or spotless living rooms.  Another attribute Jesus cherished in the kids was "childlike faith": the ability to say and feel something like: "um--this really hurts; i don't now why it happened, but it'll be okay, 'cuz you're here." But that kind of faith gets blown to shreds for many of along the way into and through adulthood as we travel through hell and get spit out onto the beach in Normandy amidst the carnage. And just telling struggling folks who've been on the Frequent Flyer-to-Hell-and-Back program to "just believe" is like a big-booted kick in the...(you said it).

So how do we find the way back to IngnoranceisBlissville? We can't. But we don't have to. We need to build a bridge from where we are at right now to someplace very new to many folks. This afternoon at the clinic, as i walked through the office to meet my next client, the litle spriteGirl Ella was long gone, but i still traced her movements with my memory  and smiled. I decided that before i went to bed that tonight I would try dancing a few seconds in the dark of my living room just like Ella had. I did. It felt really stupid... (I am a 51 year old man, after all for heavensake!) ...and really good. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face till i sat back down.

I'm glad they name kids Ella again these days. My great aunt from Kentucky--the one who gave my dad's heart a home--she was named Ella. Once not long ago a client, an artist, came in with a pencil drawing of a woman she sees standing above  above my chair in the therapy room each time she comes. She said she saw in her mind, two letters of her name: E...L... The picture sent shivers down my spine: it was aunt Ella. I don't understand this stuff and that kind of thing doesn't happen to me. But it happened for me this once and I am so grateful. I'm gonna just accept it as a child would, instead of being skeptical and blowing it off like dust from a book cover.

Anyhow, my afternoon client is a good soul, a woman fighting depression in the aftermath of a divorce she didn't chose. Her faith feels shattered now, seemingly all at once by this crisis. But it was built on stilts to begin with: she was taught as a child that it is sin to doubt God, to be angry with Him, to question why hell happens... so when it did, and she did (all of that) she felt there was no place to travel but south to Despair.

Our talk was one i will never forget. Together we explored the difference between grieving and lamenting. Both do involve feeling the pain of loss, the sadness, anger, and the helplessness of not being able to resurrect that which we love (either within another person or a relationship). This Goodsoul was grieving indeed--in the same messy way most of us do: zigzagging our ways through disbelief, guilt, anger, bargaining ("say it ain't so, Joe!", somehow reaching bits of rip-your-guts-out sadness only to run from the pain of it back to "say it ain't so". This kind of pain-recycling can feel like some kind of bad karma or a dark version of Bill Murray's GroundHog Day. But Lament? No, she, like most of us, had no clue what lament was, or that it was somehow far healthier than grief alone, that it can make grief bearable.

Many Chrisitians have been told that Lament is flat-out WRONG. But lament is what a little kid does in the arms of a good-enough-parent when her puppy gets run over by a car and dies. Confused, overwhelmed with too much pain, things get messy, loud, irrational. Maybe there is panicky blaming,  screaming, even punching in exasperation, before  the child feels the warmth and the heartbeat of mom's chest and the soothing whisper: shhhhhhh---I'm here, I'm right here..." Then the deep sobs can come... the pain becomes at least tolerable, and we feel less like our guts are hot Coke in a tumbling bottle waiting to explode. There is some relief, and a little less aloneness, perhaps a small respite from despair.

Yeah, real lament can be just like that for us big people: when it is just way too much to tolerate or comprehend in the beginning, I may scream into the face of God; crying out with all the most honest, from-the-gut, questions, even accusations I have: "How could you let this happen? IF you are a loving God, if you have all this power: if you know everything before it happens, then why let THIS happen?..." That kind of behavior is, for many folks, one weird and theologically dangerous concept. It sounds a bit like whomever the puny-faithed whiner was who had the gull to question: "MY GOD, MY GOD, HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? WHY ARE YOU SO FAR FROM SAVING ME? (Psalm 22:1)  Huh. that was actually King David who said that; the one about whom God said "...I have found David, son of Jesse: a man after My own heart" Then of course, the One who proved his faithfulness beyond all men, said this same thing from the cross: "Eli, Eli, Lama sabactani." Yeah, it seems like blasphemy, until we think about what the best parent would allow. The problem is that most of us didnt have the Best Parents; and, I know, I know--we ain't perfect parents either.  

But of course we'll blame God sometimes--afterall, our view of the whole big picture can be just as earth-bound and limited as our children's when it comes to making sense of pain. Think about it. Imagine that your little girl has gotten into the cupboards where you store the cleaning chemicals, without your knowledge. She stirs several things into a big java mug, and adds a little sugar--all nicely stirred up with the most innocent of intentions. She comes to you with a big smile, lifts the cup, and says, "look--I made myself some coffee just like daddy's", and proudly waves it in front of your nose for you to sniff: instantly you smell bleach and ammonia; your hearts pounds as she lifts it to her mouth, and instantly, before it can reach her lips, you instinctively knock the cup from her hand to the ground.

Your little girl's reaction will sound much like lament: in a huge fit of tears and anger, she might scream: "Mommy, you are so mean. How could you do that? You are so cruel. I hate you, I hate you!" As a parent, you understand her pain, her energy, and you know there is nothing wrong with her questions and accusations, (except that she doesn't understand). You probably won't punish her for pouring out her heart to you. You will comfort her, because she is lamenting: trusting that she can say exactly what she honestly feels, straight into your MommyFace. And this is just right, because her heart hurts as a being who was made in God's image to be hurt by what she perceived as a violation of love.

And so also the Lord welcomes us (despite what some may teach!) to pour out our laments in this same Child-like way, even when (and especially when) we think He has caused our pain or failed to rescue us from it. But for many people, like my afternoon client, our faith in, and experience of a God who loves us, have been eroding for a long time. Our own shame and a sense of failure often mix with old taboos about complaining or questioning God, and the best intentions of friends which eventually fall short, to leave us very alone and miserable. In those times, this invitation to face God and pour out our hearts--even this concept of freely lamenting-- seems wrong, out of reach, and may offer little sense of immediate comfort. So, then what does she do; what do we do?

This goes to the heart of my theology of personhood and community: that is, my core belief about how we were meant to face pain as humans, and how healing happens.  I believe that we--you and I-- are appointed to be the comforting, loving presence of God (often without even one spoken God-word) to each other when one of us enters those seasons of deepest pain. The opportunity to be alongside in those moments is a sacred trust. In such vulnerable moments shared, less is more: less advice, and less preaching (Preaching without compassionate understanding always feels like a morbid cold to the hurting soul. But once we have listened without compulsive fixing, "a word aptly spoken is like an apple of gold in a setting of silver").

Less fixing....and more listening, more listening, more listening...until that precious soul realizes--can no longer deny a new truth--that she is accepted, and is no longer fully alone. Then, unknown to me and without warning or fanfare, God reveals Himself in our presence. He may have been there all along but now He eases His way gently through the veil and she feels His own presence. (Once, when I was the hurting soul and He showed up like this, I kept it to myself so I could savor my doubt a while longer, just to be sure it was safe to believe. That's part of lament too. And it's okay.)

So, I'd rather not put the burden on the hurting soul to "just believe" (that is, to conjur up God like a pudgy buddha by mustering faith that still feels broken); instead howsabout I just sit in the pain along side and try the "less is more" idea--simply be with, listen to, attend to this soul. Maybe together we'll experience a subtle miracle: something happening in our midst that is bigger than the two of us.

At the end of the session, I asked my afternoon client to take a moment to simply notice what was there within her. She paused awhile and then just said...."restful". 

On long journeys, a little rest is good along the way. 

Jim Marshall

Crazy Hope with a Radiant Face

My old adviser at Wheaton Grad School of Psych, Stan Jones, (well, he was young then; we're both kinda old now) had a sign on his office door permanently affixed for all of us neurotic, insecure graduate students to read: "Life is Tough!" What an empathic guy, eh? He had posted it there as a shield to protect himself from being assailed in the midst of our panic. But we had a right to pound, pout, and whine: after all, it was his fault we were so out of our minds, because they--the faculty of which he was Chairman-- had thrown us headfirst into the quicksand of 1st semester reading about myriad psychopathologies, believing we each had 1/2 of them, without teaching us any Distress Tolerance skills! (If Marsha Linehan had been there at the time, certainly she would have been the "good-enough-parent" and equipped us to handle this!)

Anyhow, Life is Tough, indeed. As a therapist, just when i think i have heard just about the saddest story anyone could ever live, someone tells me a sadder one. There is a Baskin Robins House of Trauma Flavors that overflows with awful testimonies to how twisted and cruel people can be to each other. But amidst this all, there is also something else; very different, fortunately: there is this crazy kind of hope with a radiant face. You don't get that kinda face in the Cosmetics aisle at Walmart. You've got to have been some place that looks foreboding and smells like an existential cesspool at first; a place that becomes bearable...then beautiful--even ineffably beautiful; this is a somewhere in which the dead come back to life; where folks drowning in  shame thick as tar are lifted up and gently washed in love, in acceptance...and become radiant. I've been in that place, seen it happen, and it is so sacred that i feel like an intruder.

Once crazy hope is born in someone who thought she was hopeless, her face can't help but become a bit radiant, at least for an awkward moment. I don't always tell the client when i can see it though. It is hers to peak a frightened look at; to touch and feel, to believe in over time. This is all just to say that I love being a therapist even though it is really hard at times. I love encountering the extraordinary in these obscure, small-town therapist's hours--it is such a dramatic counterpoint to The Big Noisy Nothingness out there (and too often In Here within all of us). The beauty of seeing one's True Self emerge amidst pain (often as if through child birth) when she-- like so many of us-- had for so long wandered, self-loathing, is  priceless. I know that sounds abit like the MasterCard commercial, but it's true.

And that is what this blog is all about. Exploring, celebrating, telling our stories about this crazy hope which i confess to carrying within me--a gift from so many clients. It isn't Psychotic Optimism, because it is grounded in seeing miracles (amazing things resulting from something beyond what we can explain)  with my own eyes so many times as a therapist. And always (I mean this!) these miracles have more to do with the client's sacred life energy unleashed to heal, and to the sneaky, meek, loving Presence of God, than to any single clever technique I contribute. and here in this blog you're invited to share and teach us all too. What have you experienced? What do YOU wonder about? Let's explore it together.

And we'll talk about healing in the context of Marriage--that ridiculous business of trying to merge two human lives into the intimate oneness: what a nutso idea! And probably the greatest opportunity available to grow us UP...deeper...to help us become mature adults with more to give back to the rest of the planet... Captain Kirk once said: "Space, the Final Frontier".  But, hey, what does a guy in tights with an upside- down V logo on his chest know, anyhow?

I say Marriage is the Final Frontier! But, as my big bro Dave The Submariner always said : "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." (Yes, Friedrich Nietzche stole that quote from him.) Nonetheless, it's true. What doesn't kill us not only makes us stronger, but, if we're willing to learn and listen, marriage will change us, maybe even restore in us the Imago Dei-- God's integrity, love-likeness and joyfulness originally woven uniquely into all of us as those made "by love, in love, for Love" in His image.

So, what do you think? Any ideas about all that? Agree, disagree? Let me hear from  you. Let's start a discussion here. As long as your comments don't slam the dignity of others, don't battle along religious lines, are fairly sound, and are meant for good, I'll be sure to welcome them. By the way, Thanks to Robin Shapiro, a Sage Therapist, friend, and kindred soul in Seattle whose own blog writings about being a therapist inspired this blog. 

You can also check out my websites, www.mastercare.net (that's the clinical site for my practice, MasterCare Institute, P.C.) and Journeyintolove.com (which presents the couples interactive teaching CD I've been working on for years). The Journey site is still under construction, so be kind, but it will inform you about the Journey which will be out and available soon. Can't wait! In the meantime, you can also email me at jim@journeyintolove.com. I'd love to hear from you with suggestions, questions, stories... and don't be afraid to actually post something.

Just be sure to read the Responsibilities page before you start! Click here.

Thanks. And for now...

Peace to you! 

Jim Marshall

p.s. Saying "peace" doesn't give it to you if in this moment you happen to be struggling with despair and hopelessness. So, just on the outside chance that someone who reads this might be "at risk", let me urge you to check out this site: http://suicidehotlines.com/  These folks could save your life in a pinch! (It'll be well worth your effort and later when you come out of that dark place you'll thank them!)