How are you? Really.
There has been some serious stuff happening in the world. Even more so than just a normal year. It has been a lot. Some of it has been bad, some has been good, but I just wanted to invite you to take some time today to do an emotional inventory.
How are you?
How are you dealing with the collective trauma of what is happening in the world around you? And what are you doing to stay healthy?
It’s easy to watch the news cycle and become overwhelmed.
One of the things that I’ve been wrestling with lately is something I heard on Annie F. Downs’ podcast. Her guest (John Eldridge) said that he didn’t believe the human soul was designed to be empathetic to the world, but rather just to a village (my paraphrase, I’m sure John said it much better than that).
The implication for that statement is that we can very easily become overwhelmed with everything happening in the world because it might be a little bigger than our brains can handle.
I don’t know about you, but that resonates with me. I feel heavy, and while that is okay - it is okay to mourn. It is okay to weep. It is okay to sit in anguish. The worst thing we can do is not to acknowledge and spend time in those feelings.
I deeply desire for this community to be a place where we talk about practices for faith and life; so I thought I would share with you some of my practices to deal with the heaviness in the world.
1, Prayer. I know, cliche, the Pastor is talking about prayer. Listen, an active prayer life is one of the ways I keep my mind right. In the car, in the shower, whenever there are moments of silence I just spend some time chatting with God. Reading yourself that there is something bigger in the world is never a bad idea.
2. Friends. Find some people who you check in with and people who you trust. Dump your whole heart on them with no expectations that they have to do anything about it, just set the rules ahead of time and put it out there. I also think that doing it for them can be therapeutic. It’s good to not deal with this stuff alone.
3. Baseball! Well, it may not be baseball for you, but watching my kids play baseball is the perfect distraction for me. And while we can’t live in the distraction, it is okay to take your eyes off the world for a bit and focus on something completely different.
4. Mute. Mute social media, mute the news, be intentional about disconnecting from all of that. One of my friends reminded me of the “snooze” button on Facebook. There may be some people in your social media feed that have figured out how to push your buttons - you don’t have to engage with them. Snooze them and take a deep breath.
5. Counselor. I cannot champion mental health professionals enough. I continue to do Telehealth visits with my counselor and every time I do I just feel better. If you can figure out a way to make it work with your schedule, your insurance, or whatever a counselor is super helpful. Sometimes it takes time to build up a rapport, but once you do it is great.
So, those are my top 5. What about you? How are you dealing with all the heaviness in the world?
Tony
PS - This week on the podcast we had a great conversation about race and the church. You can listen to it here.
