Hope and Fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay.
—Maya Angelou
One foot in front of the other, you’re getting the hang of this journey now. You’ve passed through from skeptic to seeker, and you’re committed to spending some time navigating the wilderness. You are doing your best to let wonder guide your feet rather than wandering aimlessly. The beginning of the trek was much more challenging before you realized you were carrying so much dead weight in your baggage. You off-loaded some of that baggage, and with just a lightly packed bag or two you are really picking up the pace. You are taking each step with intention, and you have left at least some of the confusion behind with the extra baggage.
As you ponder how you have expanded as a person thus far, you have a weird feeling that something is behind you. You turn your head around slowly to see nothing. A few more paces, and you still feel like you are being followed. You swear you hear something rustling in the grass. You feel your heart start to race, and this time you whip around sure you will find something on your heels. Nope, nothing again. A few moments pass by as your feet try to keep pace with your heartbeat. Now, not only do you have a sense that something is behind you, but you hear and then you feel something breathing down your neck! You start to run, only to make it a few yards before you trip over a branch on the ground. As you flip over you finally see what has been chasing you: a large, scale-covered, fire-breathing dragon! And if that weren’t horrifying enough, you see that it has not only one but multiple flailing heads!
I use this image of a dragon to illustrate what it feels like to encounter grief, fear, and anger on our wilderness journeys. Not everyone encounters a dragon in the wilderness, and there are no two identical dragons, so the experience is unique for each of us. The important thing to know is that you can’t outrun a dragon no matter how hard you try. Your only option is to turn around and face it. And then to slay your dragon one gnarly head at a time.
We often don’t realize it when we are in the midst of grief and depression. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had where right in the middle of the conversation someone says something like, “Oh my gosh, I think what I am feeling is sadness. That’s why I feel this way, I’m grieving!” There is no telling how long someone can go through life with the grief head of the dragon breathing its nasty fire-breath down their neck before they turn around and see their grief face to face. No wonder they are in pain! Grief is tricky like that.
Psychologists have taught us about the different stages of grief. Most studies show that the stages are not always linear and that people experience grief in many different ways. To move through grief, it’s important that people feel freedom to express their sorrow in ways that make sense to them. Denial is often the first stage of grief, which is why so many of us don’t realize we are grieving right away. “I’m not sad,” we say, “what I went through really wasn’t that bad.” Peter Scazzero writes in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality about the many other defense mechanisms in addition to denial that we tend to implement to avoid the pain that comes with grief: blaming others, blaming yourself, rationalizing or offering excuses, intellectualizing or trying to let your brain do the work so you can avoid your emotions, and distracting or trying to find other things to occupy both your mind and heart.[1]
Scazzero says that grief and loss can “enlarge your soul.” I love that image, and I have found it to be true in my own life. Enlargement is a form of expansion, which can lead us into a narrow place. I have found myself in narrow places where people weren’t willing to engage with the grief I was facing. Perhaps you have experienced this as well. Grief is not something that you can avoid; you have to face it. The only way to slay this part of the dragon is to engage with the grief so you can move through it. No amount of self talk or picking yourself up by your bootstraps will lead you through grief. When we are going through it, we would rather be experiencing anything but grief; in our agony we’d love to experience whatever it is at the opposite end of grief! The problem is, the opposite end of grief isn’t peace or happiness—it’s denial. So being willing to face it is the only way forward.[2]
Scazzero uses the story of Job in the Bible as a model for how to move through grief. He suggests, as many scholars have, that Job represents all of us. While most of us don’t lose everything all at once like Job does in the story, all of us will end life leaving everything behind. Scazzero outlines these stages for moving through grief:
1. Pay attention. Ask yourself about the emotions you are feeling and try to name them. We often have trouble expressing how we are feeling because when someone asks us “How are you?” we typically respond with the number-one lie in America, “I’m good!” At times that answer is true, but quite often everything is not good. I’m not advocating for oversharing when someone is simply offering a benign greeting. But we need to start asking ourselves the deeper question: How am I, really?
2. Wait in the confusing in-between. Waiting is the woooorrrrst. No one likes waiting, and it is particularly difficult to feel like we are waiting on God—for a response to a prayer, for guidance, or for spiritual inspiration. But soul enlarging happens in the waiting. That’s where capacity grows in our minds and hearts. God works in the midst of waiting in ways that we often overlook.
3. Embrace the gift of limits. We are finite human beings, and we therefore have limits. Your body, mind, talents, gifts, wealth, relationships, and time are all limited. If your limits are frustrating to you, know that I am with you. Whenever I hit my limits, I always try to squeeze in just a bit more. One of my friends said something that has stuck with me: “The end of myself is the beginning of Jesus.” When I heard that, it was the first time I truly wanted to reach my limits—so that I could experience truly needing Jesus. When you are experiencing grief, you feel your limitations more readily. Embrace it.
4. Climb the ladder of humility. Scazzero uses a ladder to illustrate that humility is something that helps us rise even though we often consider humility to be something that lowers us. An unhealthy view of humility is to think about your limitations in order to make yourself lower than others. This ends up leading to a warped sense of self and as well as a disingenuous elevation of others. Instead, think of how realizing your limitations serves as a reality check that helps you engage humility. My definition of humility is not thinking too little of yourself, or too much for that matter. Rather, it is to think of yourself accurately or with “sober judgment,” as Paul talks about in Romans 12. Humility leads us to offer more compassion to ourselves and thus more compassion to others. As we grow in humility, we rise toward the top of the “ladder of humility,” where Scazzero suggests we have the experience of “being transformed by the love of God.”
5. Let the old birth the new. Beauty can be born out of the ashes, but it will take time. When something dies, it is really just the beginning of something new—think about the excitement of watching winter turn to spring each year. As Christians, we bear witness to the same sort of rebirth when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. When you turn to face whatever you’re grieving (whether that be an actual death or a more figurative loss), you’ll soon see that you can’t go back to what used to be. You won’t relate to God in the same way you did before, either. There is no such thing as “going back to the good old days.” They weren’t as good as they seem in hindsight anyway. When God leads us through grief, we are changed, often for the better.
Another head of the dragon for many is fear. Fear and anxiety are often listed together, and I think they are cousins more than synonyms. Anxiety is the term often used to diagnose what can be a crippling mental illness. When fear and anxiety begin to plague our lives on any scale, it most certainly feels like a dragon breathing fire down your back. It can be overwhelming to say the least. If you feel like your anxiety is too much for you to manage, don’t hesitate to talk to a doctor or therapist. I know so many people that are so glad that they did. You don’t have to live with the effects of chronic anxiety without support.
At the same time, all of us need to take stock of the way that fear and anxiety impact us. Recent findings suggest heightened anxiety is impacting nearly all of us. It’s clear that anxiety is on the rise in American society as the American Psychiatric Association found a 5 percent increase of the National Anxiety Score in just one year between 2017 and 2018.[3]
For people who want to connect with God, fear is a significant problem. Many spiritual directors and guides suggest that fear is one of the core barriers between us and our relationship to God. Fear is a loud talker—like the voices in a crowded restaurant that drown out the conversation at your own table. Fear creates this kind of interference when we attempt to hear from God. I think this is why “don’t be afraid” is said to God’s people so often throughout the Bible. When God sends a messenger to the people, their first reaction is often fear. So the messenger exhorts, “do not be afraid” to calm the hearer and prepare them for God’s message.
However, it isn’t easy to turn off our fear. Pastors who preach about fear like it’s a faucet you can just turn off have done more damage than good in this area. It’s also important to note that chronic anxiety is often experienced by those who struggle with mental health. It is completely appropriate for therapy and medication to help in those occasions. It’s completely inappropriate for someone to suggest to someone struggling with a mental illness that they need to “just pray more.” In this chapter, I am focusing on the fear that is regularly experienced by everyone throughout life rather than the diagnosable illness.
Fear takes control of our motivations. For example, you may be motivated to live a life of radical generosity, giving of your time and finances to those who are in need. Fear sweeps in telling you to grip tighter to what you have, not to give it away. Financial caution seems like wisdom or common sense. But before you know it, your fear of not having enough is motivating you more than your value of generosity. That’s just an example. I have seen fear motivate many to live in ways counter to their values.
Fear can be one of the most significant obstacles when trying to stay curious. Curiosity involves a desire to explore and discover. When you are fearful about what might be around the next corner, or behind the next door, you might avoid making those turns or opening those doors altogether. Fear causes containment and hinders expansion. It contains who you think you should be, who God is, and what your purposes might be in the world. The fear of the unknown holds you back from experiences and from opportunities. Fear holds you back when your mind and heart could be expanding, and you could be experiencing mystery and wonder. So what are the steps to move through fear and slay that head of the dragon?
1. Name your fears. You need to be honest and name what you are afraid of. Fear is a deep emotion; on the surface it could look like sadness, frustration, or apathy. Each of those emotions is valid, but it’s worth digging deeper to see if the root of that emotion is fear. Sometimes you even need to dig to find the fear beneath your fear. It can be difficult to discover the actual root of the fear you are experiencing. For instance, I often fear that I am going to be misunderstood by those I am close to. But the fear beneath the fear is being abandoned, or worse, being betrayed by those I love. If they misunderstand my intentions, or my heart, they might leave me! It took a few counseling sessions to get to the core of that one, and it will take you time to dig to the root of your fears as well.
2. Summon courage. “Courage is not the absence of fear; it’s moving forward even when you are afraid,” or so goes the common platitude. Courage is something we access at the core of who we are deep in our hearts. We could swap “have courage” with “take heart.” It is the willingness to name your fears, but also recognize that some things are more important than what you fear. What do you value that you won’t live out if fear is your biggest motivator? Intentional integration and growth in your faith can be scary; curiosity is risky. People might be threatened or confused by the questions you are asking, and those questions will lead to change. Courage helps you name the deeper motivations in your life that are more powerful than fear. For me, authentic relationships with people different from me is a high value. Especially people who have a different ethnic background. So I am going to take courage and step into friendships with people even though I will never be fully understood just as I seek to try to understand them and their life.
3. Take the next step. Once you can separate your fears from what you value, you can start to take steps toward what you value, even though you might still be afraid. The good news is, you only have to take one step at a time. You can make one connection with someone who can talk through your questions with you. Pick up that one book that piques your curiosity. Take one step toward learning about that career you may want to switch to. You don’t have to take ten steps at once.
4. Keep up your fear radar. I wish the final step was to skip off into your life free from fear, but that just isn’t reality. Fear is something we have to keep on our radar constantly. We can overcome specific fears, but we will never live free from fear altogether. So we have to stay diligent and constantly be aware of how fear is motivating us, because if we don’t, it can begin to control our lives.
Ian Punnett wrote a really helpful book called How to Pray When You’re Pissed at God. He says, “This permission to be real when angry is grounded in the traditional Judeo-Christian belief that humans have been given an array of emotions by God.” In the book, Punnett talks about a twelfth-century rabbi from Spain known as Maimonides. This rabbi believed that not only is anger an acceptable emotion but that you should always be able to access “just enough anger to have it never be said that you don’t care about anything . . . if you aren’t mad about something, you’re probably not paying attention.”[4] Anger leads to a sense of conviction that motivates us to act when we see injustice. Side note: some feel like we can’t have conviction without certainty. I think we absolutely can! More on this in chapter 15.
When we experience pain, suffering, and loss in our own lives, we often feel that things are “not right.” I would call that our core sense of justice or righteousness. Doing justice is working to make wrong things right. Our English words righteousness and justice are used to translate the same word in both biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew respectively. A helpful way to think of its meaning would be rightness or right-making. When we experience something that isn’t right, our sense of justice rings an alarm and often triggers anger. We long for rightness, righteousness, or justice.
When I was seven years old, I found out my dad had a disease that was going to kill him. For a long time in my life, I wanted to pretend it didn’t make me mad that I had to experience that as a little kid. But when a seven-year-old girl at my church found out her dad had degenerative MS, it made me mad! The suffering she and her family are going through made me angry. I realized that I was okay with being angry about what was not right in the lives of others, but I had been suppressing the anger I felt about my own experiences. Anger about the injustice we experience in our own lives and in the lives of others can eventually lead to compassion—for ourselves and for others. But when we suppress anger, or suggest that anger is not acceptable to God, we miss an opportunity to reach compassion.
The church is guilty of what I call anger shaming—trying to keep people from engaging that God-given emotion. For instance, I see this in the way that the white church has criticized black Christians for showing anger at the injustice and oppression they experience being black in America. “Angry black woman” is used as a derogatory phrase, as though these women have nothing to be angry about. If anger comes from experiencing what is not right, then this community absolutely has clear reasons for anger.
We need to embrace the anger inside of us and others and be encouraged to express it in healthy ways. A process to move through anger could look like this:
Here are some experiments that help us move through grief, anger, and fear.
The practice of mindfulness involves intentionally focusing one’s awareness on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations. We have been talking about how you need to turn around and face your dragons of grief, fear, and anger. To do this, you need to be willing to be present to these strong emotions and experiences. An experiment in mindfulness could help you to do this in a very tangible way.
This practice can take as little as five to ten minutes or can be extended as long as it’s helpful.
Find a conversation partner and talk through what you discovered in this experiment.
Laments are found throughout the Bible, specifically in Psalms and Lamentations. Psalms follow five parts:
In a journal or piece of paper, you may follow these five steps and write out a lament in your own words. Many people prefer to use a lament psalm as a guide to inform the lament poem they are writing. You could even try to simply rewrite the lament in your own words. Hint: When you hear language about an enemy in Psalms, it is helpful to imagine the forces of evil that the enemy of God uses to bring about brokenness in our lives and the world. Psalm 85, 90, or 142 would be a good place to start.
Find a conversation partner and talk through what you discovered in this experiment.
As we’ve learned more about the brain, we can see that gratitude is an antidote to anxiety, anger, and fear. While it’s important to face these emotions, when you are overwhelmed by them, this is a great experiment to try.
Find a conversation partner and talk through what you discovered in this experiment.