That’s me about four years ago. If you can’t tell by the tiny shorts and over abundance of muscle, I’m pretty much the pinnacle of manliness. I drink a lot of protein, hit the bench press, and use hammers.
What I really mean by that is, I love Oreos in abundance, my shoulder hurts every day just from carrying my messenger bag across campus, and thumb tacks make my hands hurt.
Judge away.
My senior year of high school during the time of my mom’s cancer or post her passing here are a few quotes I would often hear (roughly, my memory isn’t that great)
“You’re so strong all the time.”
“How do you do this.?” or “I could never go through this.”
“How come I never see you crying?” or “How are you able to talk about this?”
I was even preaching my second sermon ever roughly a few short weeks after where my mom was the center of a lot of sermon illustrations. Looking back on these moments, a lot of this was to a fault. During my mom’s sickness I can count on one hand how many times I was broken down in tears. I can count on two fingers how many times that was in a setting where more than my immediate family saw.
Here’s what can happen a lot of times when someone goes through strategy and hear me when I say this, it is not ok. I bottled up. I put aside everything that made me angry because I had tricked myself into thinking that was the selfless thing to do. I had told myself that I shouldn’t feel at all because this was much harder for my dad, or my little sister, or my brother. I was wrong. That wasn’t being selfless it was being stupid.
Pushing aside your emotion doesn’t make you tough or strong. It often means you’re weak and can’t face the reality of how terrible things actually are. It could also mean you are handling things in other less than healthy ways. Women get that most of the time. Men that do rock. I’m not a man that does.
However, after all that, and a much tougher process of sorting through OH MY GOSH THE WORLD AROUND ME IS ACTUALLY CHANGING, I found a peace. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I am still sorting through some of that emotional damage I put myself through and seeing it come up occasionally is terrifying. However, there’s an awesome peace in my mom’s passing. There’s a peace that I don’t live glued to my phone wondering if I need to drive 20 over the speed limit to get home because she’s fallen and there’s no one there that can pick her up on their own. There’s peace that I even though I don’t come home to two parents, I also don’t come home to a mom with cancer either.
Lastly there’s peace in knowing that the Lord is good and true to his Word and there is a place where there is no more pain and I live in certainty that she.is.there. That God became man and hung on a tree to rise again so that 2000 years later a woman who lived her life for him could die in her bed surrounded by her family and even in the misery, they could know that wasn’t the end but the means to a new beginning. A beginning complete with no more wheelchairs, hair cuts, falling out of bed, or being almost fully dependent on another person.
So if you’re going through tragedy in loss or anything, it doesn’t make you strong to put aside your pain. It isn’t selfless and you will never be glad you did it. It’s a healthy practice to learn how to handle emotion and how to feel. If you or others around you suggest you need a counselor, do it. They love you and they want what’s best for you and we probably all need a little therapy every now and then.
This is one of the few things I learned about myself. From the looks of it, we might be covering another 12 topics this semester. That’s either terrifying or exciting and I’ll let you be the judge.
Don’t bottle it up. Learn to handle your emotions. And if you don’t already know it, there’s a peace in following a Jesus that has prepared a place for those who put their faith in him. Beautiful.
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