The Grace of New Beginnings

The Grace of New Beginnings

The sounds of spring are abundant in Wisconsin this time of year. We are now hearing the familiar honks of the Canadian geese and the unmistakable sound of the chorus frogs, better known as “spring peepers.” Ice-free streams are gurgling again, and spring rain showers are tapping on our roofs and windows. All of these signs of new life are a balm for our tired souls. 

Signs of new life are at the heart of the Jewish celebration of Passover and the Christian celebration of Easter, both of which occur this week. The stories of these traditions point to the truth that suffering and death are never the final word, but instead, they can, over time, both be transformed into new beginnings and new life.  

Both traditions speak not of a return to life as it was but a dramatic move forward to a changed life. The stories of Passover and Easter remind us though that new life is never without fear, vulnerability, and risk.  

Irish poet, author, and priest John O’Donohue writes beautifully about the risk of new beginnings. His poem "For a New Beginning" came to mind this week. I will close with it, along with best wishes to all who this week are celebrating Passover, Easter, or any other new beginning.

FOR A NEW BEGINNING, by John O'Donohue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart, 

Where your thoughts never think to wander, 

This beginning has been quietly forming, 

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire, 

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, 

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered, 

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, 

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled, 

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream, 

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear 

You can trust the promise of this opening; 

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning 

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; 

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

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Resilience and Relationships

Resilience and Relationships

This week I had the honor to present a live workshop on resilience via Zoom for an organization in New Hampshire. One of the unexpected blessings of this pandemic has been the many opportunities we have had to virtually visit and present wellness programs to organizations across the country and around the world. Just a few months ago, my wife, Holly Hughes Stoner, who shares the Samaritan Family Wellness Foundation's work with me, had the chance to offer a live presentation for a non-profit organization that uses our teen wellness materials in Nairobi, Kenya. We both love traveling the world to support others who are enhancing wellness in their local communities, all without leaving our home office.

My resilience presentation's main focus this week was the vital role our relationships play in our capacity to be resilient, particularly in the midst of challenging times. The pandemic has made us all painfully aware of how essential relationships are to our mental health and overall well-being. At a time when we have all been negatively affected by the pandemic, many of us have been most challenged by the need for support from friends and loved ones and the difficulty in being able to give and receive that relational support. 

A mistaken idea about resilience is that it is primarily an individual strength or characteristic that a person either possesses or does not possess. My resilience talk took a different perspective and focused on how resilience is strongly rooted in relationships. As the quote above says, “When ‘i’ is replaced with “we,” illness becomes wellness.

Throughout this past year, I have repeatedly heard people talking about things that they will never again take for granted again. What I hear mentioned most often are relationships. In addition, people talk about missing activities usually done with others (eating out, concerts, traveling, movies, etc.). There is no doubt that our relational bonds have been challenged this past year.

As we begin to feel more hopeful that we can gradually start seeing friends and family again, it seems like an ideal time to be intentional about prioritizing the care and well-being of our significant relationships. May it be so that we never again take our friends and family for granted.

I often write about the wisdom that, “Whatever we pay attention to is what will grow.” I can’t think of a better time to pay more attention to and recommit to nurturing, and if necessary, repairing, our connections with others.

To put this into practice, I invite you to think about one specific relationship in your life that you would like to pay more attention to. 

What might you do to nurture that relationship right now? 

How might doing so be of mutual benefit for both of you? 

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Assist Leaders

Assist Leaders

March Madness is upon us, and if you are a college basketball fan, there is nothing better than the NCAA basketball tournaments. Both the women’s and men’s games start this weekend, and although they will be run very differently because of the pandemic, fans are thrilled that they are happening again after being canceled last year.  

Basketball, like most sports, has an abundance of statistics associated with the game. These include field goal, free throw, and three-point shot percentages, as well as statistics on blocked shots, steals, points in the paint, turnovers, bench points, rebounds, and free throws, among others.

One of my favorite statistics is for the number of assists each player makes. In case you are not a fan of the game, a player receives credit for an assist when they make a pass that directly contributes to a successful shot by another player. Players that consistently have a high number of assists in a game are unselfish because rather than always looking for a shot for themselves, they pass the ball to a teammate so that he or she can score.  

This is a column about personal growth and wellness, though, and not basketball, but I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. The connection here is that one clear sign of emotional and relational wellness is the willingness to assist others, rather than needing to keep the focus on one's self. The players that score the most in basketball often get the most attention, while the players who make the most assists often go unnoticed and unrecognized.

This is not just true in basketball; it's true in life as well, as we have discovered just how vital essential workers are to our lives. I am thinking of teachers, people who work at grocery stores, hospital workers of all kinds, and people who serve as caretakers for friends or family members. I think of clergy, social workers, and others who put in long days, often for little pay, to care for those in need. And also the community organizer who works to create fair housing for everyone, those who work for racial justice, and those who staff domestic violence hotlines. These are just a few examples of the assist leaders amongst us. These people, unfortunately, often go unnoticed and unrecognized. 

I spent many years coaching youth soccer, a sport that also keeps track of assists. After every game, the other coaches and I made it a practice to single out and celebrate the players that had made assists that day. Those who had scored the goals had already received more than enough recognition. In soccer, when a player scores, the entire team typically runs to surround and congratulate the player. There is rarely similar recognition for the player who made the assist that helped their teammate score. 

The lesson for me in all of this is twofold. First, I need always to be looking around to see to whom I can pass the ball. In this case, the “ball” may be a compliment, an expression of gratitude, or keeping quiet so someone else’s voice can be heard. Second, I need to make a special effort to appreciate and acknowledge others when I see them making an assist--whether that assist directly benefits me or someone else. Most of us probably know an assist leader who could use a little encouragement and appreciation right now.

If you are a college basketball fan, enjoy the games over the next few weeks. Root hard for your favorite team. Root hard for the underdogs along with the teams you picked to go far in your brackets. And root hard for the assist leaders, too, because in the end, none of us can win without them.

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Story Time

Story Time

Having had both doses of the Pfizer vaccine several weeks ago, my wife and I are blessed to be able to visit our grandsons indoors grandsons again after what seems like an eternity. We see many changes in them over the last year, but one thing that has not changed is their love of stories.

As much as they love to read stories and have them read to them, they also love it when we tell them stories. I am a natural storyteller, and so I love to make up stories for them. Their most frequent story requests are for us to tell them a story about themselves, which retells an important or silly moment in their lives. They love to join in the storytelling, adding essential details that we might have overlooked.

It seems that we don’t ever outgrow our love of stories. It’s why we love to read and watch movies. And it’s why we love to remember and share stories of both significant and silly moments in our own lives. It’s why, as we mark the first anniversary of the start of the pandemic, so many of us are finding ourselves sharing stories of the pandemic shut down, of our last large group gatherings, last trips, last times we were able to gather with or visit loved ones. As part of my many Zoom meetings and phone calls this week, I have asked at least twenty different people this week to tell me a story about what they were doing a year ago right now. Everyone has been delighted to share their memories of how and when they first knew that everything was about to be different in their lives, and they have been grateful that someone took the time to listen.

Stories are how we make sense of life. Stories are how we connect. They are how we pass on traditions, whether of family and friends, our communities, or our faith. Stories allow us to process and integrate both the joys and the sorrows of life. 

So ask your friends and families to tell you a story from a year ago. And then listen to how grateful they are to have the opportunity for someone to care enough to listen as they continue to integrate all they have been through this past year.   

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Inside Out

Inside Out

It’s been a year since the pandemic changed all of our lives. Everyone has their own story of how hard year this year has been. There is one group that I hear from a lot and that I have special empathy for and that’s parents. Parent’s lives have been turned inside out by their kids doing school from home, day care centers being closed, and all the while often working from home or risking their health as essential workers.  

The full range of emotions are on regular display as both adults and children are exhausted. And yet, like the superheroes they are, parents find a way to keep on keeping on and doing the seemingly impossible every day.  

In honor of parents, for this week’s column I am sharing an excerpt from a book that my wife Holly Hughes Stoner and I wrote called the Parent Wellness Compass: Outfitting for the Journey. The reflection is entitled “Inside Out: Feeling and Expressing the Full Range of Emotions.” Even if you are not a parent, I think you will find what we write to be applicable to your own personal wellness, as well.  

“Imagine your emotions existing on a continuum, or a scale from zero to ten. Think of the emotions on the bottom end of the scale, zero to five, as the difficult or unpleasant emotions, such as fear, worry, anger, and sadness. Now think of the emotions at the top end of the scale, six to ten, as the pleasurable emotions, such as joy, laughter, love, and excitement. Right in the middle, at number five, is considered the neutral point, where we don’t really feel much of anything, pleasant or unpleasant.

 Here is an important insight: There is a strong connection between the degree to which we are comfortable feeling and expressing unpleasant emotions, and the degree to which we feel and express pleasurable emotions. Difficulty feeling and/or appropriately expressing unpleasant feelings usually means we will, perhaps surprisingly, have difficulty feeling and expressing positive feelings. While we know that we all have the full range of emotions, it is when we either tamp feelings down or let them explode that we get into trouble.

 The best example we have of those who are comfortable expressing the full range of emotions is young children. Observe them at a playground: one moment they are shrieking with delight as they come down the slide, and the next moment they are sobbing loudly because they have fallen and skinned a knee. A moment later and we might see them angry at a child who will not share, and in another moment hugging that same child. It is easy and natural for children to live into all of their emotions.

 There is a wonderful animated movie from Pixar, Inside Out, that depicts a young girl learning to handle the full range of her emotions. Eleven-year-old Riley is having a hard time when her family uproots itself from Minnesota and moves to California because of her father’s new job. Riley becomes quite sad and angry because she misses her friends, school, and hockey team back in the Midwest. Riley’s well-meaning parents don’t like seeing her upset and so they repeatedly encourage her to “focus on the positive” and try to act happy even when she is not feeling that way on the inside.

The brilliance of this film is its portrayal of Riley’s inner emotional life. Through the magic of animation, we are able to “see” inside Riley’s brain where five characters representing five emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust—take turns controlling the “keyboard” of Riley’s brain. Riley’s parents want Joy to be her prominent emotion and Riley clearly wants to please her parents. So we see Joy doing everything she can to control and stifle all the other emotions, especially Sadness, so that Riley experiences only joy. Of course, this doesn’t work and, in the end, it is only when Joy accepts and welcomes the presence of Sadness that healing occurs, and Riley begins to accept, adjust, and embrace her new life.

Inside Out reminds us that all of our emotions are important and need to be heard and accepted, because all of them serve to tell us something important about our world. Our emotional well-being will be enhanced when we allow ourselves to both feel and express the full range of our emotions in healthy ways. Our sense of well-being will be diminished when we try to block or deny any of our emotions. It is important to remember that allowing the expression of all of our emotions brings openness and provides space for connectedness, healing, and growth.” 

If you know a parent who could benefit from a word of encouragement right now, find a way to reach out and offer that word to them today.  

If you would like to download a free PDF of The Parent Wellness Compass: Outfitting for the Journey, you can find it HERE.

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