Not sick, just discouraged

I’ve been studying for my final (which I take tonight) and stumbled across some more good thoughts from Alfred Adler. He seemed to think that Freud’s view that people were sick (neurotic, disturbed) was incorrect. Adler believed that people were merely discouraged and needed encouragement. He said that encouragement was the most powerful method available for changing a person’s beliefs, that it helped them build self-confidence and stimulated courage. He defined courage as "the willingness to move forward even when fearful."

Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m moving forward with getting my degree at Denver Seminary, knowing that one day I will leave this secure job of mine, and try doing something completely different – counseling. Lord, favor the foolish!

By the way, be sure to read Jen and my wife today – excellent stuff!

What if you're wrong?

I heard this song on the radio this morning:

But what if you're wrong?
What if there's more?
What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for?
What if you jump
And just close your eyes?
What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?
What if He's more than enough?

What if it's love?

~What If, Nichole Nordeman

I’ve been a Christian for 33 years, but I rarely just close my eyes and jump into God’s provision. I’ve watched many of my friends take risks to trust God, and I’m always amazed. One of these days Alice, one of these days.

Basic Mistakes and Private Logic

OK, Justin wanted me to post some of my thoughts that I had shared with him on a walk we took, so here are some reflections on Adlerian Therapy. Adler sees individuals as the actors, creators, and artists of their life. But often they make “basic mistakes” or hold to “private logic” that keeps them operating in ways that are not helpful. If I perceive that I’m inferior, I will attempt to move from a felt “minus” to a felt “plus.”

An example of this from my life is that after finishing “grade school” at a one-room country school with 13 students, I went on to the biggest culture shock of my life by becoming a freshman at a 1,000-person high school. After being there a week, I found that the only kids who seemed to be developing a relationship with me were apparently at the very bottom of the social ladder of the school. In what now seems like a cruel act, I stopped hanging out with those guys and began to get involved with other activities that would get me in with what I perceived to be a better group of kids. I went from feeling inferior to examining my basic mistakes, and then set about to correct my style of life.

Also, by growing up in a pretty dysfunctional family, I developed a lot of faulty “private logic.” Some of my faulty core beliefs that I’ve done a lot of work to recover from are:

1. I’m basically a bad, unworthy person.
2. Spending money is dangerous.
3. I am what I achieve, and I’ve got to achieve a lot to be okay.
4. Hard work will save me.
5. Being alone is bad.
6. Small mistakes will almost always have huge negative consequences.

These rules have greatly affected my life. By believing at my core that I was basically bad, I often acted in ways that felt consistent with that belief. My belief about money has affected my relationships with my wife and kids in a negative way. By always needing to achieve, I have often put tasks ahead of relationships, and goals ahead of the joy of the journey. By believing that I could be saved by hard work, I found it hard to give myself a break in life, and very difficult to experience the grace of God. By believing that being alone was bad, I missed a huge part of my relationship with God that I am now discovering through Spiritual Formation. By believing that small mistakes have big consequences, I have lived a life of fear, ruled by the illusion of control.

For a long time, these core beliefs served me pretty well. I could even find Bible verses to support them. But as I got older, it became harder and harder to continue to believe these lies. It’s only as I have gotten to the experiential source of these beliefs, and replaced my trauma-induced, lie-based thinking with experiential truth, that I’m now finding unprecedented freedom to be the man of God that I have longed to be. But sometimes I feel sad that I didn’t figure all this out a lot sooner.

The elusive top of the mountain

As I have been reflecting on the whole concept of uphill and downhill, I realize that I have already begun the journey downhill. I’m nearing the end of my engineering career. My daughter has graduated from college and is married. My son is nearly finished with his degree in music. I’ve entered the world of the contemplative. I’ve dropped out of church. I’m becoming a downhill person.

But now I’m pursuing a whole new career by going back to seminary to get a master’s degree in counseling. That is UPHILL. I’m really enjoying it. And yet, I wonder at times if I'm satisfied. I think my goals about family and my engineering career were met and exceeded.

My goals for church were not. I dreamed of growing with a church and becoming the pastor of worship. Instead of climbing to the top of that mountain, I ended up going downhill having never reached the top. I’m the has-been who never was.

I’m trying to be okay with that, but there are twinges of regret as I think about the years and years of investment in the local church. I was striving for meaning, investing my time, my gifts, and getting my identity from my contributions in a system I no longer believe in. Now I’m unplugged from the system and trying to sort it all out.

I can’t go back to the striving, and yet God has made me for a purpose. I suppose one of these days it will become clearer to me what that purpose is. For now, I get up out of bed, breathe in and out, and continue the journey. But forget the mountain. This is a valley.

Great conversation going at Gloria's and Mike's blog.

Check out the links on my side panel to "My Daughter" and "Mike Musselman's Blog" -- they've got some really great insights about church and leadership and what's important and what's not. I wish I had more time to write my thoughts, but I'll just say this. The church has GOT to wake up and smell the coffee. The world has changed and we are missing it. It's time to change our culture, and it's time we started dealing in the weightier matters of the law (so to speak, not that we want Law), things like justice, mercy and faithfulness.