In late October I wrote a blog, “12 Ways the devil can Mess with You”; that’s when things got fun… fun is being used in the sarcastic sense. In that lesson I shared how I have largely overcome the main way the devil messed with me in my younger years (the voice telling me I’m stupid) and how it’s been replaced with general discouragement – there’s always something the devil uses to mess with us. I don’t know if that post inspired the devil or if it was just coincidence, but the next two months were two of the most discouraging months I’ve ever had. When the barrage of discouragements was happening in November, I kept telling myself “It’s just a terrible November. Next month will be better.” Counting down the days to December gave me a sense of hope… and then December proved to be ready to follow November’s footsteps. My message then turned to, “It’ll be a fresh start in January.” I’m aware life doesn’t magically turn around because of a date, but by giving a timeline it’s easier to get through a rough spell. It’s like telling someone they’re going to prison without a set time; they’d just eventually be let out. That set up would be its own torture. Knowing it’s (blank) days/months/years gives hope of an end. Timelines are an excellent way to keep bad things manageable. That’s where death becomes such a challenge – it’s forever; that person isn’t coming back. Being cheated on is the same – it’ll always be this new reality. Fortunately, with things like death and being cheated on we can still give timelines to help us feel like there’s hope. For instance, with these two things, the first week is a blur, the first month is brutal, the first three months are the worst, but better days start happening and then by six months the better days become more frequent. After a year we are typically closer to a sense of normal. Sometimes, like losing a child or parent, no matter how long it is, there’ll always be a hole in our heart that can’t be filled, but at least we can develop a new sense of normalcy. My friend who lost her son over fifteen years ago still has moments of intense emotion over the loss, but her life is back to a more regular situation – time plus good behavior leads to some healing.
My time of discouragement didn’t include being cheated on or the death of a close loved one (just a cat), but then that period wouldn’t have been discouragement – it would’ve been grief. The benefit of a grief period is feeling like garbage is very acceptable: “My life sucks right now, but that makes sense because of what I’ve lost.” I wasn’t in grief, however, so my garbage feeling was less obvious. As a therapist, I was hearing stories of situations that were way worse than mine, which can be make it tempting for my brain to be like “You feel sad for your situation, but you’re not nearly as bad as them. You should feel guilt for your feeling when others have it worse.” Fortunately, I’ve learned to let myself feel my emotions and not feel guilty for them. Of course, someone has it worse. Someone else also has it better. That doesn’t take away from my own experience. My situation sucks. I’m allowed to feel bad in my situation because it is bad. It doesn’t have to be the worst for me to be allowed to feel bad – it’s not a competition. Sometimes people feel bad when they shouldn’t; they’re just negative people, but that’s not what I was experiencing – my time was rough.
Now that life is better, I can see that those two months had more negative experiences than usual on top of having less positives than usual, which really threw off the normal balance. The devil also added another way to mess with me as he was trying to convince me I was alone and didn’t have any friends – he’s good at twisting reality. Thankfully Christmas helped fix that lie.
I should point out that even in that discouraging time I continued doing my positive things like exercising, taking my vitamins, venting, having decompression time, trying to get enough sleep, and my daily prayer ritual where I do thankful exercises, give myself a compliment for something I did in the day, give a blessing to someone I talked to that day, and ask God for three specific things. These didn’t erase the discouragement I felt, but they kept the damage at bay.
My push to feel thankful even in bad situations was most evident after I talked with someone who had a more intensely discouraging time than me. Hearing him actually made me grateful for what I had compared to him. I was already grateful it wasn’t a grief period – I’d rather have my life be chipped away at than to be slammed by a sledgehammer – and this helped remind me it could also be worse in the discouraging sense, so be grateful. Being grateful helps us not make it worse. For instance, my life might have been in a struggle phase, but if I hid in my bed, drank myself stupid, or stopped doing my responsibilities, there would be repercussions that would make my life worse. In this season, I needed to be doing my healthy routines all the more in order to limit the bad things that would follow. I don’t want to make life any worse than it needs to be – I can’t stop all the bad things, but I can limit unnecessary struggle.
In my situation, there wasn’t anything special I needed to be adding; I just needed to continue doing the right things I had already established while handling what came my way the best I could. When our addition had to be put on hold until the spring because our workers let us down, it was a tough but necessary choice. When the waste line from my house plugged with tree roots in December, I called the plumber and got it fixed. When our five year old cat had to suddenly be put down, I did it. When the other cat disappeared for two weeks, my wife put up posters and watched online in case she was found. When my van windshield leaked, I got it fixed. When the fix didn’t work, I brought it back… twice. When the mechanic did the next two repairs for free and was very apologetic, I knew I had someone with good character. The bonus of that rough experience was it proved both our characters – I was always kind and he took responsibility and fixed the problem.
All the negative things that happened were like a slow erosion of my soul. Out of all the things that happened (the above was a small sample), however, the one thing I’m not sure how to answer is whether my two kids being sick or me dealing with my own health issues was harder (they were sick for a month and a half while I was sick and then had chronic pain issues that have continued to this day). On one hand, you feel pretty helpless when your kids are sick and you have to watch them struggle, but when you’re the one who’s sick, it’s amazing how quickly that can erode your patience and kindness. Being less friendly to others and occasionally sharper than I want to be leads to guilt and being frustrated with myself. Neither situation helped at this time. To add to this, after two months of being sick my back exploded in pain. Why? According to my chiropractor, it was because of being sick for so long and my back is a natural weak point that finally snapped. That’s fun. On the plus side, it was after most of my sneezing and coughing were done (that would’ve been worse), but the pain was so bad the one day my wife had to put my socks on me and I had the old man grandpa shuffle over Christmas. Talk about feeling like a flop of a man: “Hey, I’m in my 40s. Can you treat me like I’m in my 80s? This is sexy, right?”
Fortunately, I kept my timeline in mind, allowed myself to feel my emotions, I did my best to be thankful, I continued my healthy habits, and I was eventually able to reconnect with friends to be reminded that I wasn’t alone. The devil is amazing at messing with us and sometimes he’s working overtime. Fortunately, there is always hope that the sun will come out tomorrow, betch yer bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun… sorry, my inner Annie needed out there.
This week may you remember the devil likes to mess with us, but it’s up to us how we handle it. And whatever happens, we need to remember we were made with the strength to endure (and there’s a God who can help).
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, Learning to love dumb people (like me)