How I learned to surf

I surfed once, in California in my early 20s. I only managed to get on top of 4 waves, but I will never forget the incredible feeling of falling and flying simultaneously. Since then, I've only been on a bodyboard. A doctor, John Kabat-Zinn, uses surfing as an analogy for emotions: "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf them." A surfer named "Buzzy" characterized surfing in a way that relates to all of life: "Waves are not measured in feet and inches, they are measured in increments of fear."

I am intimately acquainted with fear. It is the monster inside that roars at the slightest provocation, sometimes even convincing my terrorized brain that old threats long gone are nipping at my heels. Life feels not only radical as I step into a new reality, a new person, a new way of seeing - it is terrifying. Change of any kind is not a welcome guest in my life, and to change the very structure of my self is breathtakingly scary and uncertain.

Long ago, as a child, I built four sturdy walls in my soul and put a lid on top. It was my Pandora's box, my underground bunker where I could stuff all the bad things in life, all the tears, all the emotions I was too terrified to feel. I remember going into my room once at 10, clenching every muscle in my body and screaming silently. I was afraid that if I let my emotions out, they would destroy everything. As it turns out, avoiding them has nearly done just that.

Every Monday, in land-locked Wisconsin, I have a surfing lesson for one hour. It takes place in an office, not a beach, and the waves I'm surfing are the huge Mavericks - the biggest waves of all time - that come flooding out of that bunker when I take off the lid. Large waves can literally throw a surfer to the bottom of the ocean, turn him in so many somersaults that he can't tell which way is up, scrape his flesh on the coral, and either send him to Davy Jones' locker or toss him up like a fish gasping on the beach. How do you surf those emotions? The biggest ones of your life?

This is how I learned to surf the big ones:

1. Don't go it alone. You need a spotter when you're letting a tsunami out of your soul.
2. Don't rein it in. Realize it's just an emotion, and it will soon be over. Submit to the fact that you can't change the past and you can't change this giant wave of emotion. You can only ride out to safety.
3. Do be well prepared. If you're letting emotions out, sorting through old memories, often it's intentional. It's our human way of processing the good and the bad that happens to us. Make sure you've had good rest, good food, and a good mood most of the day before you purposefully open your Pandora's box.
4. Do let yourself be free to express the emotion. You may need to cry, scream, rant, rave, or curl up in a ball. Be somewhere safe for this.
5. Do rate your emotional pain. Before you start a session of internal or conversational processing of trauma in your life, rate how painful the memory is at the beginning, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being low intensity and 10 being high intensity. After you've allowed yourself to surf the wave of emotion that comes with the memory, rate it again. You may find the memory is much less intense once you've allowed yourself to experience the emotions that went with it.
6. Do nothing but surf. A real surfer isn't dropping in on a wave thinking about his grocery list. In fact, surfers report that riding a wave is a blissful, meditative experience that fully captures their mind, body and soul. When you're surfing emotional waves, do so at a time you can concentrate fully on the sensations and feelings. Don't do it at work, or on your drive home, or when you have to do something later in the day. Do it when you have plenty of time and brainspace.
7. Do remember that emotions never last forever and they generally don't kill you. Emotional waves are always temporary. And they have little power over you once you accept them and let them flow. 

One last thought: when you're new to something, it's always good to have a few lessons. Especially when the stakes are as high as they are out on the ocean of emotion. Surfing isn't learned in a day, and there are many, many wipeouts along the way. A therapist, friend, or lay counselor you can trust may give you some tips on surfing that I cannot. I hope you find that, once you're out there among the waves, it is actually an good experience. And once you've ridden the biggest wave of your life, every other wave will seem tiny and totally rideable.

Surf's up - who's with me?

On our wedding day

We take our place by the window in the evening light. Will it ever start? We've waited so long. Fidgety with excitement now, we will ourselves still as the last of the preparations are done.

The chairs are set for the guests. Lined up pearlescent in rows, velvet and gold for the special occasion.

Right now, it is an echoey empty hall. In a few minutes, there will be the bustle of the ushers seating family and the thrill of the bride walking down the aisle. We wait for her, anticipation thrilling our very bones.

The tables upstairs are set for a feast. Place cards lined up in rows for every guest, from smallest to oldest. You can almost hear the tinkling of glasses and the low thunder of a thousand voices punctuated by laughter.

Casks of wine sit in the cool cellar, tapped and ready to fill glasses. You run hands over the rough oak barrel, and remember a time that Jesus filled the empty casks at just such a wedding as this.

Our time will come. We are the beautiful, the beloved, the redeemed. The Bride of Christ. Every wedding here on earth is a foreshadow of that great day in heaven when we will prepare ourselves to meet our King dressed in the finest and with giant dreams for an eternity of love.

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the Marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Revelation 19:7-9)

"Beautiful"

I stopped wanting what I can't have

I step onto the sandy beach and there in front of me is a woman who used to be a best friend. It's strange to type those words "used to be a best friend". How does that happen? How do the most vibrant relationships in your life wilt in one night? Those who participated in our shunning in 2010-11 are spectres in my memory, danger signs, bright red flags painting our city. I've avoided all the old favorite haunts since 2010 because I didn't want to meet you anywhere. And now here we are, on the same beach for an afternoon. Acting like strangers. There is a gulf between us. An unbridgable gulf. A man-made expanse of uncharted territory between our old love and this new hate.

It is a sign of progress that I can stay on the beach even though you're there. I feel your eyes burning a hole in my back, and here I am talking to one of my real best friends - one of the ones who would never do something like what you've done. She's not a professed Christian, but she's doing a better job at it than you are. Caught in the tension between the old and the new, I cannot deny the joy and power of this moment. I am realizing that you don't offer anything I want now. I've been changed; you haven't. I won't ever long to talk to you again. It rings with finality, this accepting that you are forever gone from my life.

I look out at my children, and I have a message for them: sometimes the friendships you think are important turn out to be just a catalyst for your transformation. You do and always will have true friendships. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but you children know more about true and false friends than any child should. 

Blood is thicker than water. When you're in desperate need, I guarantee you will pick up the phone to call someone in your family, not a friend. We will be there for you. We will always love you, no matter what.

You will learn more from the relationships of your childhood than at any other time of  your life. Love and respect the people who you won't ever be able to get away from. Invest here.

Your cousins are the next best things to siblings. There is already an inexplicable bond between you and your cousins. You will remember how strong this childhood tie was every time you see them throughout your life - reunions, holidays. You will always love them and they will always love you, no matter how little or how often you see them, no matter who you each grow up to be.

And those few friends we have right now, the ones who feel as close as family? The love and beauty wrought in these strong friendships will never leave you. You will be strengthened by every memory and every time you spend with them from now until you are very old. They remind you that you are worth it. You are worthy of love.

...................................................

Perhaps that is exactly what I feel on the beach. For the first time, I am acknowledging within myself that I am worthy of faithful friends. I don't deserve to be discarded and beaten down by those who would call themselves "friends". That's not how true friends act. All my life I've held a verse in Proverbs tenderly: Friends can destroy one another, but a loving friend can stick closer than family. (18:24) In church, I've only known the first kind of friend. Outside it's walls, though, I have those friends - 4 in particular who will stick with me no matter what.

I owe it to these - my precious family and friends - to loose the ties to yesterday and live in this moment with them. Accept it from the hand of God. Yes, He allowed the destruction of many friendships very recently, but He has also provided me a faithful few whose love is so strong it has held me up when my own two legs couldn't. These - the hands and feet of Jesus in my life - are worth forgetting the pain for.

What didn't kill me has made me stronger. And now I must accept life - participate in it, find joy in it, mine for the gold every day. Because if I am still breathing, it must be right for me to be alive.

Radical acceptance equals giving up your hope for a better past for the hope of a better future.

Progressing to exposure

I watch a ladybug lazily climbing towards the flowers. I don't know if this is her top pace or if the sun has made her drowsy. She inches along, bit by bit. This is me, I think. Inching along. Barely making progress. Feeling the "two steps forward, one step back" process is going too slowly.

Reprocessing is the next step in my therapy journey. This technique holds onto the hope that, if you talk about it enough, a memory loses it's power over your present and future. Before I began this part of therapy, I was very nervous about it. I held it at arms length, even thinking about refusing to participate at all. I also noted that I was self-sabotaging the very process that offered me the best chance at recovery.

Now it's started, and the debate is over. Two weeks of it brings a reduction in flashbacks and a return to somewhat normalcy. I wake up today, knowing it is therapy day, and there's that nervous excitement brewing in my belly. My heart speeds up in anticipation. My palms are cool and clammy. There is something about knowing a little surge of relief is coming. It cracks open the outer shell and tentatively tilts the tender to the sun.