Learning to Shift

A good friend of our family was in town recently for a conference. While visiting, she was excited to tell us that she had recently decided to take up road biking so that she could ride with her husband, who is already an experienced biker. My friend works out on a regular basis and certainly knows how to ride a bike, and so she anticipated that she would adapt quite quickly to her new sport. In turned out she was both right and wrong about that. She found it easy to ride the bike, but quite difficult to figure out the shifting.  

Her new road bike has 21 gears or speeds and she had never ridden a bike with more than three previously. First, she had to figure out what the left had shifters controlled versus the right hand shifters. She had to figure out how to get into gear 5 or gear 14 or gear 21. This was hard enough, but there was more to learn. Next she had to learn out on the open road, when to use what gear. What gear do you use to go down a hill or up a hill? When do you shift into a lower gear as you approach a hill? She found if she shifted either too early or too late she lost valuable momentum and the climb up the hill become much more difficult. She eventually realized that she could only learn the art of shifting through miles and miles of experience on her bike. There was no simple formula of when to use which gear, but rather she would have to get the “feel” of when it was the right time to shift into a different gear. She was excited to report that in just the three weeks since she had purchased her bike, she was already making good progress.

During our visit our friend was also telling us about her son who is going off to college later this month. The topic had now changed to a whole different kind of shifting. A big hill is just ahead for my friend and her husband, and their son. Since neither of them have done this before, the shifting is bound to be a bit awkward at first. I remember when each of our children went off to school. I tried to pretend like I could ride right through this transition and I minimized the amount of shifting that would be required. Of course when I did this, I soon found myself out of breath, and forced to slow down and give this important transition the time it would take to work through.

When it comes to our emotional and spiritual wellness, the more gears we have available to us, the better off we will be. Knowing when to slow down and when to speed up, and learning the art of shifting back and forth between the full range of emotions, from sorrow to joy, will help us better negotiate the hills and valleys we face. Learning to gracefully accept that “to everything there is a season” is the heart of much wisdom and wellness. There is one more thing that every cyclist soon learns that also has direct application to wellness. Biking long distances is made much easier when you ride with a group, because each person takes turns breaking the wind for those behind. As you and I continue to perfect the art of shifting in our lives, may we also remember the importance of finding others with whom we can share the ride.

Overcoming Homesickness

Summer is associated with many activities, and one of the most popular of those activities is going away to camp. If we don’t have a child ourselves who is going away to camp this summer, we most likely know someone who does. And we can certainly think back to those exciting times when we were kids going off to camp. As exciting as the feelings of going to camp are, there are times when just the opposite feelings arise and the child experiences homesickness.  

I spoke with three different parents this week who were dealing with homesick children away at camp. As I reflected on the many other conversations I had with people this past week, it became clear to me that kids aren’t the only ones who sometimes struggle with being homesick. Adults get homesick, too--they just don’t talk about it very much. In fact, whenever we are negotiating a significant change in life, whether we are 12, 42 or 72, we will find ourselves longing for the comfort of what was, of that which we have left behind. Home is the people and the routines that are familiar to us at any given time in our lives. When we grow or move away from those familiar people and routines, we feel both excited and sad.

One of the reasons we remember our camp experiences so vividly is that they were powerful examples of our first attempts to move out of the “comfort zone” of our family. Going to camp placed us in the “growth zone” and we were justifiably proud to be able to negotiate this transition. We suddenly felt older and more mature when we returned home. We were not the same child who had left home just a week or two earlier.

I looked up several resources on how to help a child who is homesick. The most common advice I found is to first acknowledge with the child that it is normal to feel homesick, and then to keep the child’s attention focussed on the present moment, on the fun they are having at camp. That’s great advice for a camper. Honor the sadness, but don’t dwell on it. Immerse yourself in the present moment and all that it has to offer you. Another good piece of advice was to send something from home along with the child to camp, like a stuffed animal or a picture, to remind them that even though they were in a new and different place, they could bring part of home with them.

We adults can learn something from this advice as well, whenever we find ourselves longing for the “home” of some previous time in our lives. We will do well at those times to honor the feelings of sadness and loss that we are experiencing. We will also do well to immerse ourselves in the present moment, to uncover all the possibilities that it holds for us. We have a saying around here at the Samaritan Family Wellness Center: Change is inevitable, Growth is optional. Here’s hoping that all of our transitions right now, whether we are children or adults, can become life-giving and life-changing experiences of growth.

Flood Recovery

Milwaukee, my home town, made the national news this past week because of record setting flooding. In some parts of the area seven inches of rain fell in a fifty minute period. Several feet of water was common in homes and business that had never flooded before. Some homes were flooded up to through the first floor. A couple of giant sink holes developed, including one that swallowed up a full-sized SUV. All around the city people spent the weekend cleaning their flooded basements. Neighbors helped neighbors haul damaged carpet, boxes and furniture to the curb, where it awaits pick up by the city public works department. The size of the pile in front of a given house is a public sign of the severity of the flood damage the house endured. It is also easy to tell the specific blocks that were hit the hardest because every house on both sides of the street in those blocks have their large piles of debris. As flood victims recover from their suffering, there is at least one important lesson we can learn when it comes to wellness.  

The first, and most important, is that suffering is always lessened when it can be shared. When we suffer a loss, nothing helps more than the ability to talk about it, the ability to tell our story of what we have experienced. Literally everyone I have been in touch with the last four days, whether in person, on Facebook, or through email, has been sharing their flood stories as they work through both the physical and emotional damage of their losses. The raw emotions of anger, laughter and tears have been flowing every bit as much as the rainwater flowed last week. As painful as the flooding has been for so many, there is something very moving about seeing the way so many people have come to together to support one another. Some people have compared it to the weeks after Katrina in New Orleans, or times when our city has been crippled by a major snowstorm.

The asking for and/or giving support to or from our neighbor is relatively easy when we have experienced loss from a flood, or other “natural” disaster. As we have seen again here in Milwaukee this week, that support makes all the difference. This got me to thinking, how wonderful it would be if we could just as easily ask for and offer support when we experience other kinds of losses as well, such as a job loss, the loss of a loved one, or a significant physical or emotional distress. What if there was a way to publicly mark our homes when we were experiencing loss, just as the curbside debris now marks the homes that have suffered loss from the floods here in Milwaukee? All of us in Milwaukee are either suffering from, or know someone who is suffering from last week’s flood. And all of you reading this, wherever you live, are either working through or know someone who is working through other kinds of losses in their lives right now. In the spirit of what we have seen in our area this week, let’s resist the urge to isolate from one another and instead come together as neighbors to help each other recover and heal in times of loss.

Deep Wells and Deep Wellness

The efforts to fix the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico are of course made difficult because the opening to the well lies so deep below the ocean’s surface. The well opening is 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean and the difficult working conditions at such a depth are what make progress so difficult. If this well had been drilled on land, or in shallow water, the problem certainly would have been fixed by now. There is a lesson in this for all of us in regards to our personal and relational wellness: the deeper the change we try to make or the deeper the wound we seek to heal, the more difficult the process is going to be. Deep-seated habits are the hardest to break--just ask a heavy drinker or a life-long workaholic or a couple that has been bickering for twenty years just how hard it is to change their habits.

Hard does not equal impossible, though. It is possible to change deep-seated problems or habits within ourselves or within our relationships. The mess in the Gulf shows us that three conditions must be present if change is going to happen; a high degree of urgency, patience and perseverance.

Did you notice that once the oil spill began approaching the shores the urgency to fix the problem became much greater? The same principle applies to changing our deep-seated habits. We don’t usually get serious about change until the consequences of our habits become more visible and begin to impact our to day life in a significant way. Taking time to break through denial and honestly assess the effects of our habits can help provide us with the urgency we need to make deeper changes.

The efforts to fix the oil leak have tried our patience and tested the perseverance of those working to solve the problem. We have all shared the same experience when trying to make changes in our long term habits. Most attempts at change, whether personal or relational, are cut short by a lack of patience and/or lack of perseverance. In our fast paced culture today we can easily forget that change that is both real and substantial, takes time.

And yet, how can we not commit to the work it takes to make deep change? The rewards are so great. Just this week, the fact that some real progress was made with the oil leak has brought cautious, but great excitement and relief. Earlier this week I spoke with two people working on deep changes, a young woman who had recently stopped smoking and a man who had recently reconnected with a brother he hadn’t spoken to in ten years. They sounded the same way--both cautiously relieved and excited.

It seems that in both oil work and personal change, working in the depths is both challenging and frustrating at times, but oh, so wonderful when success is finally achieved!

In Honor of the World Cup: "The Beautiful, Simple Game"

The Beautiful, Simple Game

The last four weeks have been heaven for soccer fans. Every four years, thirty-two countries meet (a record 204 countries started the qualifying process this time) for the World Cup finals, a month long tournament watched by billions of fans around the world. The championship game will take place this Sunday between the Netherlands and Spain, and which ever team wins will be bringing the World Cup trophy home to their country for the first time ever.

Soccer is often referred to as “the beautiful game” because of the incredible skill and grace displayed by players at the highest level. Another beautiful aspect of the game is the way it flows. The game is continuous without any interruptions for timeouts or commercials (except at half time). Substitutions are minimal, with each side in the World Cup allowed only three subs the entire game.

For me there is another reason that I find soccer to be such a beautiful game, and that is its simplicity. It is perhaps the most simple sport there is. All that is needed is a ball and a couple of make-shift goals and the game can be played. No fancy or expensive equipment is needed. And because almost everyone knows how to kick a ball, even young children can play the game.

There is something else amazingly simple about soccer and that is the set of rules for the game. There are only 17 rules for soccer, known as the 17 “laws” of the game. Compare this to American football which has 367 rules. That’s right, there are 350 more rules in American football than in soccer. This is probably why a football game requires seven officials, while a soccer game requires only three.

Like soccer, a well-lived life is both beautiful and simple. Living well does not require a great deal of rules or laws. The Boy Scouts of America recommend twelve laws to live by: be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Jesus recommended two: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t get much simpler than that, or more beautiful.

I started playing soccer as an adult some twenty years ago. I still play every week, and only regret that I was not introduced to the beautiful game as a child. When I started playing it took me about ten minutes to learn all the rules. Thousands of hours of playing since then have increased my skills, but I still have a long way to go before I could consider myself playing something that could be described as beautiful!

And so it is with our desire to live a life of wellness and wholeness; it doesn’t take long to learn the rules (see those of the Boy Scouts or Jesus above), but it takes a life- time to learn how to execute the skills on a consistent basis. The World Cup will be over soon, but the players will continue playing the beautiful game as long as they are able. May we be inspired to do the same, living lives that are both beautiful and simple.