A few days ago, just like every week, my nephew and my craft-loving niece came over to visit. After a whole day at day camp, my nephew mostly needed some rest and Netflix. My niece, however, did what she always does and dove straight into the craft box to see what kind of creative project we could cook up today. Triumphantly, she pulled out a bag of macramé yarn. I was happy, because making macramé bracelets is something I love doing myself!
I chose two shades of brown to make a rock-solid, classic (but maybe boring?) macramé bracelet. My niece, on the other hand, was much more creative. Instead of knotting the macramé yarn, she used it to make a black-and-white ring for me. "Black and white," she said, "because it matches the shorts you're wearing." Such a sweet kid.
After that, she carefully picked out three colors to make a long braid. Because after all, who says you have to knot macramé yarn? Why not braid it if you feel like it? She is so right. We adults and our stupid, conventional ways of thinking! Anyway, she chose her three colors, cut them, carefully taped them to the table, and was ready to start braiding. Only... she didn't actually know how to braid, so she asked me to teach her. Even though I’ve been braiding effortlessly for at least 25 years and can do it with my eyes closed, I actually had to stop and think about how to do it. Braiding is one of those typical skills that lives in your muscle memory, not in your head. So, I sat down in front of her three carefully chosen threads, clamped each thread tightly between my fingers in that typical 'braiding way', started braiding, and concluded that each outer thread had to be moved to the middle, alternating right and left. I showed my niece and let her try after she said she was ready. Unfortunately, she couldn't manage to clamp the threads between her fingers yet, so she decided to just lay them loosely on the table (a bit like macramé, really) and braid that way. I thought it was a great, clever idea, but guess what? Without tension on those threads—meaning, without clamping them tightly between your fingers so they are pulled taut—it turns out to be completely impossible to make a braid! You need tension on the rope to be able to braid. My niece found that a bit too difficult, so she left the braiding to her godmother (me!), who was more than happy to do it for her. I asked her to take a few photos of it:
I found braiding to be a wonderful analogy for the spiritual life. Without tension on the rope, there is no braid. Without tension on my emotional life, there is no spiritual growth. If everything goes smoothly, if I always accept everything and just experience life as if it’s all perfectly fine, I don't grow. I would just drift through life, and everything would always stay the same. There might be few depths, but there would also be few heights and very little spiritual and emotional growth. It is only when tension is applied to my emotional life that I kick into gear.
It is when I am agitated, emotional, or otherwise unsettled that I begin to look at what is truly going on. That is when I go into prayer, talk about it with others, and/or write an inventory or a blog post about it. Only then do patterns emerge, or sadness, anger, and resentment, allowing me to feel: what does God want me to do? What is the right action to take at this moment? Without tension, no braid. Without tension, no growth.
I also found it interesting what happened to the bottom part of the threads while braiding: they became completely tangled up! (Not because I'm not good at braiding, but because that is truly a law of braiding: with long hair or long threads, the bottom turns into a big mess that you regularly have to untangle yourself). I asked my niece to take some photos of this too (please forgive her for the blurriness, she is only six...):
While you get a beautiful, tight braid at the top, you get a mess at the bottom that needs to be untangled regularly—otherwise, you might as well throw the whole thing straight into the trash. I found that truly fascinating.
Tension on my emotional life creates growth within my emotional life, but it is messy. Feelings are confusing and cluttered, and they can often leave me deeply unsettled. It feels as though a giant knot is forming inside of me, and if I don't handle it the right way, I will soon be 'knotted up' to the point where I am completely stuck.
Just like I regularly had to let go of the braid with one hand to untangle the threads at the bottom with my other hand, I also frequently have to untangle the mess of feelings inside me. And that is important. Very important, even. Crucial. Vital. Because if I don’t take good care of myself, then any spiritual or emotional growth and beauty is completely out of the question. Then I am nothing more than an angry, resentful, or sad shell of a person. Not exactly what I'm aiming for.
How I take care of myself at moments like that depends mostly on God's guidance for me. I always start at the very beginning: laying everything before God. Telling Him what I feel, and placing it into His hands.
After that, I try to tune into what the energy moving inside me is actually asking for. If I need to share everything out loud with someone, I call a friend in the program. If I need to calm down, I meditate or sleep. If I need to focus on myself and the good things in my life, I cycle to a craft store and buy a new set of embroidery thread (thank God embroidery is dirt cheap!) or I head to the kitchen to cook a nice, delicious meal for myself. These are all things I know, can do, and often practice, and things I have written about before.
Working my 'basic twelve-step program' is also what I do then, and it truly helps me. I look at what the underlying fears are and ask myself the following questions: how did self-reliance (doing it on my own, without God) fail me? How could relying upon God help? And what does God want me to do? But I also look at my so-called character defects and ask myself a few questions: what does my life look like with this 'character defect'? How do I imagine my life without this 'character defect'? And what prayer could I write and pray regularly, asking God to remove this from me?
Yet lately, I am experiencing something that is new to me, and for which all the tools above are not quite right. For a while now, I have been experiencing a lot of anger, a lot of rage, and a strong current of negative energy rushing through my body. Well, it isn't really negative, because it is telling me something, and ultimately, it helps me grow. But it is energy that demands an outlet, because I notice it can be potentially risky if I don't do anything with it. I am still searching for ways to navigate this, but I do notice that God is guiding me through it. What I have discovered so far that works really well for me is:
- Walking. A good, long, power walk. That is an old faithful for me, one that I also used a lot during my grieving process a year and a half ago. A few days ago, late at night, I went for a walk for over two hours. Because I had to. Because the energy had to come out. Because I needed to discharge. And it worked magnificently well. Afterward, there was only rest and peace. Whew.
- My most recent discovery: jumping rope! It turns out to be insanely efficient for discharging quickly! By the way, did you know that when animals experience stress, they instinctively discharge it by shaking (like dogs do) or by running around like crazy (like cats do)? They do this to release the tension from their nervous system and calm down again. (You can read much more about this in Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine). We humans are often conditioned to 'behave ourselves' and not do this, so we get stuck with bottled-up emotions. Discharging it yourself is sometimes truly key. Jumping rope, it is!
- Dancing, dancing, dancing! Not with choreographed steps, but with blasting music playing (on headphones, of course). Pounding music, just letting my arms and legs fly in every direction. Whether you can actually call it dancing is debatable, but it is highly efficient. It works incredibly well for me with (extreme) anger. I think I’ve been doing this for at least a year now, and for me, it is a truly powerful tool to discharge quickly and effectively!
I am more than happy to share my top three power songs to blast here. (They are all very Christian, though. I simply don't listen to anything else anymore. But if you are a Christian or open to rocking out to them, then please do!)
If I do all of this, and regularly untangle myself and my emotions, there is a very good chance that the braid that is my spiritual life will ultimately look quite neat. Just like my niece's did, by the way, because her idea to deviate from standard macramé eventually gave her a wonderful result: a long pink, beige, and lilac braid that she could weave into her ponytail, giving her hairstyle a great new look! If I do the same—deviate from the conventional path by listening to what God truly wants for me—I too can achieve a beautiful result. One that is a whole lot more interesting than what I always thought was right for me. God truly knows better than I do. He really does. I just have to trust and follow, and in the meantime, do what He asks of me. Does it take courage? Absolutely. A courage I don’t possess on my own, but that He is more than happy to give me.
Speaking of which... Writing the previous blog post made me realize how long I have been feeling empty, miserable, and addicted to chat applications. The next day, I felt it was time to delete those apps and limit myself strictly to phone calls (and emails). I’ve been doing this for a few days now, and I feel so much peace! Apparently, I needed that tension on my emotions to grow. God knows what He is doing, always.
