Office Hours

Well, I've been dreaming up this post for a few weeks now. Gathering my notes, recalling themes over my years of meeting with clients and attempting to come up with some perfect, anonymous examples to give you a sneak peek into the counseling and spiritual direction office and the important work that happens there .

And then life happened this week.

To me.

And I watched my response like an out of body experience and thought "well, there is your blog post."

Let me back up and explain.

As I said in the previous post, on the blog this fall I want to break it down PRACTICALLY-- what it looks like to identify struggles our lives, pursue healing work and actually change as people.

We have to remember in this process that there are two things that are true of ALL of us at all times: we are sinners and we are sufferers.

We sin. We are bent in on being our own god and seeking our own good above all else and we won't be fully free of this until we meet Jesus face to face.

We are also sufferers. We are hurt by the world around us that is both broken and painful. Life is hard and not easy to navigate.

The suffering part is unavoidable and it's part of why we long for the life to come and it is why we are so thankful for the joy we experience in the midst of a broken world.

I want to focus on this series of posts in the sin part because this is where we can do something about our experience and see actual change in our lives. We can't always change our circumstances but we can, by the grace of God, change our responses.

Where does all of this trouble come from?

Scripture tells us that we sin (often this plays out in fights and quarrels -- conflict with ourselves and others) because we don't have what we want (James 4). In fact, we often begin to see what we want as a need.

The truth is that God is sufficient for ALL that we need so these wants/dominating desires can also be called idolatry-- creating a "little god" that we think will satisfy-- an alternative to the God who made us for our good and to display his glory.

I love how author/pastor Tim Keller breaks down the most common idols into 4 main categories:

1. Power: a longing for influence or recognition

2. Control: a longing to have everything go according to my plan

3. Comfort: a longing for pleasure

4. Approval: a longing to be accepted or desired

*As you can see, these are not needs but wants that have a lot of power over us and if you are like me, ALL of those things sounds extremely desirable and are very much my natural bent.

And, lucky you, my PERSONAL example from this week hits all 4 of these!

Let's break it down, shall we? And for the sake of the Office Hours title of this post, let's pretend that I am the counselee coming in to a session to share and process my experience.

How this might play out during a counseling session

Counselee: I am both surprised and disappointed at my angry reaction this week.

Counselor: Tell me about what happened?

Counselee: My husband ran out of gas. On the highway. With our daughter in the car.

She missed her soccer practice which was so important to her.

I spent hours coordinating everything that day and it ended up being pointless.

Our whole family ended up in the car for 1.5 hours at rush hour-- hungry and tired and frustrated because of his mistake.

And one more thing...I've told him for 15 years to not cut it so close with the gas gauge. He has never taken me seriously and I it turns out I was right.

Ok, pause for a minute.

Seems reasonable in a way, right?

Yes, because in this case I have experienced suffering. I am suffering the consequences of my husband's mistake. We live in a world where cars need gas and schedules are busy and people are hungry every few hours. This situation was everything I said it was and more: inconvenient, uncomfortable and frustrating!

But my reactive response was anger.

And what made this sin is that it was anger that led to a demeaning tone, hurtful words and a tense environment for everyone in the car.

So why is this the perfect example? Because ALL 4 idols were at play.

As a counselor I might direct the conversation with the counselee this way:

(after expressing some major compassion for the annoyance at hand)

Counselor: What did you see come out of you at that moment?

Counselee: Anger. Haughty words. Irritation.

Counselor: Are you aware of what emotions were behind those behaviors?

Counselee: I felt like I was not heard when I had expressed concern about this in the past. I had tried to prevent this and I saw that I was in fact powerless to prevent it. (POWER)

I also felt out of control-- this was not according to the plan I had. (CONTROL)

This was very uncomfortable and inconvenient and I really dislike that. (COMFORT)

In the midst of the stress I was maybe most upset that our daughter would feel like we failed to get her to practice. I felt fear of how she would feel towards us. (APPROVAL)

See why this was the perfect example? It hit ALL 4 idols for me. Power. Control. Comfort. AND Approval

Ok. Pause button. HUGE DISCLAIMER.

No one processes their experience this "neatly" and in perfect categories but for the sake of making this blog post readable in one sitting I'm cutting to the chase.

Normally a huge part of my role as the counselor is to ask question after question to help the soul sitting across from me to untangle his/her idols. One of the most beautiful things about this process is how the presence of God is oddly tangible in the room when someone is humbling themselves enough to take an accurate assessment of themselves. He truly gives grace to the humble.

So now what?

This is where the work begins. Awareness in and of itself is not change, although it is a crucial step!

We can be aware that we function, let's say, as an enneagram 3 achiever type and simply expect people to accept our idolatry of achievement. This would be awareness without further steps.

But there is another way.

Choosing the humble path of healing. It is humbling because this starts with the acknowledgement that you have a need to heal-- that no matter what has happened or what others have done to you, you have ownership of your responses.

Humility is the key ingredient to change.

Sometimes healing is a deep, long process and we will talk more about that in future posts. But today I want to share one "formula" to pursue healing that I have found immensely helpful and practical in my life and the lives of others when the healing required isn't too complex.

The C-A-N acronym

I like to use the acronym "CAN" because it's a reminder that we CAN make a different choice and respond differently when we seek to crush the idols in our heart and tend to the hurting places by the power of God within us and the presence of God with us.

C- Confession

We need to confess to God and to others that we are wrong in our response or in our heart (our sin is not always committed externally, right?)

I encourage my counselees to talk out loud to God about their sin-- He is well aware of the depths of our brokenness and it is freeing and good to admit the truth.

I also encourage confession to others - sometimes to the person being sinned against and sometimes to another trusted friend depending on the situation.

For me, this looked like confessing both to the Lord and to Dave and the kids that my reaction was really a root issue of surrender to what God had planned for my evening that went against my agenda.

A -Apply Truth

Behind our idols is a belief that the thing we want is the thing we need. So we have to correct our thinking in order to correct our affections/desires and therefore change our behavior.

Our greatest tool for this is the Word of God. It can be an inspiring challenge to find how the promises of Scripture and the character of God counter that things we have come to believe or cling to over time.

This step can also include identifying an inaccurate "narrative" we have come to believe and recite to ourselves.

A few passages that came to my mind in this instance for me were:

"No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly." Psalm 84

Truth to remember: God is not holding out on me by allowing hardship. Therefore I can surrender to a change of plans with joy.

"Love covers a multitude of sins." - 1 Peter 4:8

Truth to remember: The greatest commandment is LOVE. Not arriving at soccer practice or being comfortable. I am to cover over and absorb the sin of others in many circumstances

I need to learn to ask the question: "what would be most loving in this moment?"

N- Next time, the chance to go a new way

We have the chance to try again the next time these patterns rear up.

One key is to slow down in our reactions! Anger is a first responder but in most scenarios an unhelpful one.

We have to have time to consider our options in our response so that we can choose the better path. We often have to do the heart work of analysis into our motives and desires and idols so that we can absorb the situation at hand and not simply react to it.

This might sound very complex but as many things we learn over time it can become our pattern.

I hope that next time a family member creates an inconvenient scenario, I would slow down long enough to remember the truth of God's hand over my life and therefore be able to pour out the fruit of the spirit on those around me despite my ideals

In Conclusion

Keep in mind that there is so much nuance in situations that cannot be completely covered in a blog post. If you ever have a question after these posts, send me a message so we can discuss it further. I'm hoping to do some sort of podcast version of this series in the near future so that there can be more discussion surrounding these scenarios in more depth.

Look for another Office Hours post next month!

In this with you,

Lauren