Good morning my friend!
Last week on Spiritual Brain Surgery, I had a wonderful talk with my friend Christopher Cook about healing the big wounds that life can bring, the ones we call “Massive Things” that leave us wounded and wondering if we can find our way again. It’s worth your time to listen, and I highly recommend his new book, Healing What You Can’t Erase. Here’s a clip of the talk if you want a little preview.
Now let’s do some self-brain surgery!
In last week’s letter, we talked about the differences in how the two halves of your brain attend to the world. That’s an important concept, and it would be helpful for you to read it if you missed it before.
Here’s Some Science:
There is a phenomenon in physics called the Quantum Zeno effect. Basically, when you observe a system repeatedly, the system collapses into the one reality you’re observing. This is like taking pictures of something with a camera that has an extremely high frame rate, like the hummingbird video in this Instagram post.
The camera is taking pictures so quickly that it seems like the bird is stuck there, and you can see incredible detail of the hummingbird, as if you could reach out and touch it. Of course, in real life that bird is so fast that you would never be able to see or touch it in this way, but the way in which we’re observing it makes us feel something different than reality.
Quantum Zeno, essentially, makes whatever we’re observing stay there in that place and that state as long as we want to observe it. And the important thing to know is, the thing isn’t staying that way because it has to; it’s staying that way because we’re observing it.
Here’s Some Scripture:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Whoever scorns instruction will pay for it, but whoever respects a command is rewarded.
The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death. Proverbs 13:12-14, NIV
I want to exegete that passage a little. We often read it and think it’s saying that when we have to wait for something we hope for it makes us feel bad. But that’s not what it’s saying.
The word deferred here doesn’t mean delayed. In the Hebrew, the focus is not on having to wait for something we hope for. It’s a verb that means we choose not to allow God to pull us up out of hopelessness. Over and over, the words the Old Testament uses for hope have a connotation of ropes and tension, the type of holding on for dear life to a cord that’s going to pull us up out of whatever we’re dealing with. And here in Proverbs, the writer is saying that when we choose to defer (avoid, not grab onto, refuse) the sure deliverance of hope, it makes us feel worse, and our hearts get sicker. (Our friend Susie Larson has written beautifully about this)
Let’s Smash Them Together:
One of the things that can happen after we face trauma, tragedies, or other massive things is that we can get stuck. Sometimes even well-meaning people like family, friends, or therapists can enable this “stuckness” by encouraging us to focus on the wrong question.
It’s becoming clear from psychological research that focusing on a problem actually makes the person feel more stuck and makes the problem grow larger. This is one of the types of harm that can come from therapy, if the therapist does not continually help you focus on healing and orient you to the future rather than continuing to look at the thing that hurt you. Healing happens by choosing hope, and understanding that your brain, mind, and heart are designed to heal and not to stay mortally wounded by life’s sharp edges (check out yesterday’s podcast for more on that).
So what’s the way forward?
The way forward is to choose hope. To believe- to know- that healing is the plan for your life, the normal outcome if you hold onto hope. As Chris said, there will be scars. But scars tell a story of healing if you observe them correctly.
If your friends, your therapist, or your own focus is keeping you stuck in a constant re-opening of wounds and tearing off emotional scabs, then your hands aren’t free to hold the rope.
So, if you’re feeling stuck or you’ve been deferring hope, you need to find “the teaching of the wise” mentioned in the last part of that passage. Get some people around you who will help point you forward, to see that the path to healing never leads backwards towards the pain, but ahead to the promise of life.
No matter how long you’ve been stuck, the good news is that you can start today.
Lisa and I are praying for you.
Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),
Lee
Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA
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Interesting