Relief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  God doesn’t snarl at us. He is patient with our questions too. But I think sometimes He rolls His eyes a bit and wishes we would just enjoy the mystery. He whispers, “It’ll make sense later, I promise.” It’s exhausting to have to have all the answers, isn’t it? To try to keep everything under control, to foresee all the worst-case scenarios, to have multiple backup plans for everything? Frankly, it’s not just exhausting. It’s impossible. Humans weren’t built to be gods. We are made in the image of God, so we have a degree of foresight, wisdom, and intelligence. There is a lot we can do, and as we learned from James, part of faith is doing what we can do. But part of faith is also accepting what only God can do. The quest for full knowledge or control leads to burnout and anxiety, but acceptance leads to rest. I’m not talking about giving up, but about giving lordship over to God, about casting our cares on Him because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Let the uncertainty of life lead you closer to God. Take His yoke upon you, as Jesus invited His listeners to do, and you’ll find rest for your soul. PRAYER IS WONDER Finally, prayer puts us into the mystery of God by awakening wonder. David wrote, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14). If something is wonderful it is admirable, marvelous, worthy of praise. The word refers to the object in question. God is wonderful, the universe is wonderful, grace is wonderful, humans are wonderful, love is wonderful, family is wonderful . . . the list could go on forever. To have a sense of wonder, though, refers to the subject: to the person who is in awe of something else. As humans, we need to develop our gift of wonder. I think God loves it when we stand in awe of a sunset, when we gaze at a sleeping baby and feel overwhelmed with love, when we enjoy a meal with friends, when

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I felt ready to swoon all over again, in sheer relief. ‘And Mr Banner,’ I said, ‘won’t mind it?’Mr Banner, it turned out, had no objection to my staying there at all; indeed, as before, he proved pleasanter than his wife, and willing to go to all sorts of trouble for the sake of my comfort. When they ate - for I had interrupted them as they were about to take their tea - it was he who set a plate before me and filled it with stew. He brought me a shawl when I shivered; and, when he saw me limping into the room after a visit to the privy, he made me pull off my boots, and fetched a bowl of salty water for me to soak my blistered feet in. Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase, rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke.Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; account-sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn’t stir; it was Ralph who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing envelopes... She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven o’clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me.Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned.‘I had better go up, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind sleeping in here, I hope? I’m afraid there’s nowhere else for you.’ I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket and a sheet.‘Do you have everything you need?’ she asked then. ‘The privy is out the back, as you know. There’s a jug of clean water kept in the pantry, if you’re thirsty. Ralph will be up at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if Cyril wakes me.

• From Bold Move

  Although I imagine that the way out is difficult, I saw how my mom changed after she was in a safe place. Don’t get me wrong, it was challenging. But it led to a better life for all of us. Reflection Identifying Crossroads Where Values Collide Experiencing the stress of colliding values is not something unique to Ricardo and me—we all deal with this all the time. It is not the collision that is the problem: the problem is when we feel the tension of making a choice, but instead of being intentional about our choice, we avoid. Looking back at your values that you identified earlier in this chapter, reflect on a recent situation where two of those values collided, and think about the following questions: When my values collided, what did I do? [Your Notes] How did I feel after I took this action? [Your Notes] Is this something that I do over and over again? [Your Notes] What is the short-term consequence of my action? [Your Notes] Long term, does choosing a specific action related to one of these values keep me stuck? [Your Notes] Here is another example of someone who is remaining in place but not avoiding. Kate, a client of mine, called me the other day to check in and talk about whether or not she was avoiding. Kate had been in a very abusive and unhappy work environment when we met and was frozen in place. She had gained a hundred pounds over the years, and she was feeling terrible. While Kate and I worked together, she was able to get a new job. She had been happy there for a while, but here she was a year into that job and things weren’t going well. Similar to the first job, she had decided to stick it out but was wondering: Am I avoiding? So, I asked Kate why she had decided to stay, and here is what she told me: “Despite this not being an ideal job, if I stay for another six months, I will get a significant bonus, which I need to help our family get out of debt. So, I decided I will stay for that time, do the best I can at the job, and when that date approaches, I will look for another job.” “How did you feel when you made that decision?” I asked Kate. “I still don’t like the job, but making the decision made it easier to handle the daily grind of it all. I guess I feel like there is a plan now and I have to execute it. I guess I feel comfortably uncomfortable!” That is when both Kate and I understood that she was not avoiding; she was just weighing her options until she could get to a better situation. Life is hard, and at times there are no good options right away. So just because you stay put, that does not necessarily mean you are avoiding.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Even though I was not studying Islam, I found, during this first visit, that I was spending more and more time in Muslim Jerusalem. My Israeli colleagues were becoming friendlier. I could see that Joel was now less pessimistic about my prospects, but they still regarded me as a prim English schoolteacher and were happy to part company with me at the end of a day’s work. Danny would drive me back to the American Colony, screeching up to the entrance of the hotel with a flourish, clearly eager to get rid of me and begin his own evening. “Thank you very much,” I had said on the first occasion, as I got out of the car. “What for?” I looked at him questioningly. “Why are you thanking me? Don’t thank me! I have to drive you, whether I like it or not! It’s my job!” “Okay.” I got out and slammed the door in what I hoped was a reasonable imitation of Israeli insouciance and strode into the hotel without a backward glance, smiling inwardly. I was always being told not to say “please” or “thank you.” When I had lunch with Joel and his colleagues, I learned that I just had to grab what I needed, even if that meant stretching across other people. “You are not in England now!” Joel kept telling me, and even though I was far too English to leave “please” and “thank you” out of my vocabulary entirely, it was quite fun to lay aside the habit of deference for a time. I felt something within me relax and expand. But I saw little of my Israeli colleagues socially. Joel had dutifully invited me to dinner shortly after my arrival, and I had met his wife and baby son. But no further invitations came my way. But Ahmed and his Palestinian friends clearly did not find me so dull, and almost every night somebody in East Jerusalem would call and invite me to dinner. I was so ignorant about the political situation that I saw nothing strange about crossing the line and entering the Arab districts of the city. I noticed that suddenly the Western buildings disappeared and that I seemed to enter the Third World. There were no streetlights, no street signs, and the taxi invariably got lost in Beit Hanina or Sheikh Jarrah. If the driver was an Israeli, he would become nervous and agitated. “It’s dangerous, lady! These people will kill you! Let me drive you back to your hotel.” Today, of course, that would be very sensible advice.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  that the fragmented thoughts or demons or whatever is rattling around inside their heads get cleared out by morning. Side note: It’s even harder to shut down a kid at night than to shut down your word processor and forty-seven documents. I’m straying from the topic. Complaining about parenting is therapeutic, though, so thank you for listening. You can send me your bill. Prayer is a bit like resetting your soul. And just as with computers and small children, how exactly it helps can seem like a bit of a mystery. God’s ways are higher than our ways, after all. I know that when I pray, it settles and focuses my mind. It clears out some of those fragmented things—thoughts, projects, hurt, sin, emotions, challenges, plans—that rattle around in my soul. It definitely helps expel a few inner demons. Spending a few minutes in prayer refreshes us on the inside. It gives us a clean start and a new beginning. Prayer helps us process the things we have on our hearts and in our brains. In a sense, prayer is like going through those unsaved documents, deciding whether to save them or delete them or finish them, then closing them down and clearing up some headspace. There is a lot of pain, confusion, and trauma in life, but the Holy Spirit helps us work through those things. He gives us understanding into what matters and what doesn’t, what can be discarded and what we should hold on to. DEAR GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS? Being able to process our pain, doubts, and trauma in God’s presence is part of an emotionally healthy spiritual walk. It’s also something that God-followers have done for thousands of years. Just look at the book of Psalms. David was an incredible example of someone who knew how to take things to God in prayer. When you read his psalms, you often see a progression that looks something like this: 1. Pain: complaint, suffering, sorrow

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Mom. She said, “Chad, I was praying for you right now, and God spoke to me. He said you’re going to move back to LA someday, start a church, and live the rest of your life there.” Tears began to flow. I could hardly see to drive. The sense of loss was replaced by an assurance of sovereign calling. The anxiety and frustration had given way to peace. I knew in that instant that every season was in His hands, every step planned out by Him. God was going to lead me and use me in Puyallup. I began working with the young people in the church. We met Sunday nights because the weeknights were too full of school activities. My Sunday routine was to go to church in the morning, head home to change, play basketball for a couple of hours, then go straight to church at three o’clock to set up for the youth service, which started at seven. I would put on worship music and set up the chairs while I prayed over each one. Soon I invited a couple of young people to join me for prayer. For forty-five minutes, we would walk around the room and pray for the service. Sometimes we would sit or lie on the floor, seeking God and praying for our generation. Eventually more people started coming to pray, until fifteen or twenty of us were meeting together every Sunday afternoon at three o’clock. We did that for nine years. Again, God showed up. There were twenty-four students at our first Sunday night youth meeting. Within nine months, there were six hundred. During those nine years, thousands of young people met Jesus, built relationships, and found peace. Their lives were changed, and the effects of those changes rippled out into their families and friends. Eventually we hosted an annual youth conference, produced our own music, and much more. It was beyond anything I dreamed of when I left LA. It was astronomically greater than I could have imagined as a senior in high school, leading prayer meetings during lunch. This was completely supernatural. There’s no other way to explain it. GEORGIA

• From Bold Move

  It was not easy, and he admitted to drafting multiple posts, but he never actually posted any of them. How? He stuck to the plan! He had been practicing his opposite plan in a clever way, too. Angad told me that whenever he felt like posting something out of desperation, he instead opened his photo folder and proceeded to edit and organize them without posting any. This process of reviewing his own photos cooled his emotions off and by the time he finished going through his photo albums, he no longer felt the need to post something. By the way, this was not my idea—it was Angad’s! I commended him for it, as it allowed him to release some of the internal pressure, but it prevented him from reactively posting. I have seen this with most of my clients, where after practicing opposite action with me based on the plan we come up with together, they end up creating their own plan, which often not only is more effective but further empowers them. It’s times like these that tell me my clients are really making change in their lives. Filomena’s Opposite ActionFilomena had tried her hardest not to text Ted when she was feeling the worst of her separation anxiety, but as you know, that didn’t work. So, what could she do instead? Well, we created a list of ways she could handle separation from others without seeking reassurance. We started by creating shorter, planned separations, during which she would find something to do that did not involve her phone. In the first experiments, Filomena and Ted would schedule times when he would go out with friends for a few hours while she would go to the gym (opposite action—without her phone!). As we increased the amount of time they spent apart, she had to really focus on tolerating her discomfort by planning the opposite action beforehand. And once Filomena and Ted reunited, we made a rule that she was not allowed to grill him about every last detail. But because we didn’t want to create any new forms of avoidance around the relationship, Ted agreed to share what he wanted and she could ask questions, but the moment it turned into her seeking reassurance about the relationship, Ted would note this and the discussion was over. This technique works well for couples, but only if both are on board. I often say to clients: I will answer any question you have once, but if you start to ask again and again in different ways, you are likely just avoiding by having me reassure you, which never helps.

• From My People (2022)

  And because we were all suspect until we found it, we were all equally eager to locate it. Oddly enough, the person who provided the most relief for us in this difficult situation was usually my grandmother herself. Often, she would come into a room a few minutes after telling us of something that had never really happened and say, “You know, I do the craziest things sometimes. I’m really losing my mind.” And, speaking to my mother for perhaps the first time in three or four days, she would clear up the whole confusion, set the details in order, and laugh so hard at her previous fantasy as to make us all laugh with her in relief. Later, she would most likely send for the evening paper and read it from front to back, occasionally commenting quite lucidly on some item she thought was of interest. And so I was easily persuaded to take her to Leverton that Saturday, not only because my mother was fearful of her going out alone but also because my grandmother was more coherent than she had been in several days. I thought it would be good for her to have something to occupy her mind. She had already read the Saturday morning paper when she came into my bedroom. “The paper predicts showers, but I don’t see a single cloud,” she said. And as we pulled out onto the freeway at a little after eleven, the sun was young and bright, and where it shone on dew-laden fields of green wheat or acres of red clover the reflection was almost blinding. Few cars were traveling in our direction. Most of them were coming from the small towns along the way, their drivers headed for a day’s labor in the city. We passed red-and-white Burma-Shave signs with slogans we both knew from memory. The long, white, unobstructed stretches of highway led us along smoothly. Sometimes I played the radio and we would listen without talking. But about fifteen miles out of the city the reception became poor, and I had to turn it off. “The cemetery lot was a gift,” my grandmother suddenly said, speaking almost as if we had been having a conversation all along. “My mother was a slave before I was born, and the man whose farm she lived on, Mr. John Robert Henry, gave it to her just before he died. Later, she was freed and the people on the farm knew about the gift. They didn’t need to see any legal papers as long as Mr. John Robert Henry had given his word. And they knew he had. My mother gave me the land later on, and I plan to tell them at the City Building just how it all happened. I know I can work it all out,” she concluded, full of confidence in the relationship between slave and master.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  I talked to Devon one last time shortly after graduation. “This year, I mentioned to a guy on my team that I had been afraid of talking about my sex life with him because I didn’t want him to see me differently. He interrupted and said, ‘Devon, even if you stripped down right now in front of me, I wouldn’t see you differently.’ That was a healing moment as well and indicative of the culture that had developed on the team. It’s not like kumbaya-land, where we’re all sitting around telling our secrets, but people feel more comfortable with their close friends and there was a lot more sex positivity and openness. And . . . I don’t think that was an accident.” Chapter 5Heads You Lose, Tails I WinBoys of Color in a White World Darkness was falling on a late November afternoon as I crossed the campus of a large state university in the Midwest. I shivered against the chill, shoving my hands deep into my pockets, wishing I had remembered gloves; I spent my childhood in Minnesota, but three decades in California had made me soft. The students I passed looked like those I’d seen at a dozen other campuses: girls in black leggings and North Face jackets, their hair hanging loose under knit winter hats; guys in jeans, duck boots, and (despite the cold) school hoodies. Normally, I would’ve paid little attention to them, and even less attention to their race, but today I was hyperaware: white, white, white, white, and white. Every student I passed was white. The girl who politely let me into her dorm without asking why I was there or whom I was visiting was also white; I’m sure she assumed that a middle-aged lady like myself—again, white—was no threat to anyone. The students I was meeting weren’t extended that same trust. Xavier and Emmett, both first-semester freshmen, were African American men, the most underrepresented group on campus, something they were reminded of regularly. More than once, when Emmett had shown up at a friend’s dorm, or walked across campus late at night, he had been stopped by security guards, demanding proof that he was a student. Even when he showed his ID, they seemed skeptical.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Slowly, Vivian learned to go easier on herself, both online and in real life, and as she relaxed her own standards she became more forgiving of others. When Anna invited her and some colleagues to an overly loud restaurant with a serious lack of parking, she let it go rather than complain to the group. Rather than steering the conversation with white knuckles, she tried listening and following the natural flow and found, to her amazement, that she enjoyed herself more. Previously, Vivian felt she had been walking an acceptable social line thin as a tightrope, but as she continued to soften, to her relief, she found the line to be wide and forgiving. And Rosie? She gathered all her courage and showed up at a bar with pool tables. She reluctantly joined in, hoping no one would notice if she skipped a turn or two. But to her surprise, a lot of other people sucked, too, and those who were skilled didn’t care that she wasn’t. She didn’t have to buy into the myth; she didn’t have to perform perfectly. It wasn’t even about the pool. Emboldened, a few weekends later she went bowling, threw gutter ball after gutter ball, ended up with a low double-digit score, but had a great time. How many people cared about her bowling score? Exactly zero. But how many people, for the first time, felt happy just being her (imperfect) self? Exactly one: Rosie. 14 Why You Don’t Have a Social Skills Problem (You Heard That Right) Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so. —FRANÇOIS VI, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, MAXIMS, 1665 The high cinder-block walls of the brand-new boxing gym were brightened with murals—one wall with a huge logo of the gym, another with the painted likenesses of local boxing champions. Industrial shelving was neatly stacked with physioballs, jump ropes, and boxing gloves of every color. Around the two regulation-sized rings, punching bags hung from the ceiling, waiting to be pummeled. It was a perfectly equipped gym. There was only one problem—it was empty. That is, except for the owner, Derrick. Derrick came to see me after the gym opened, asking me to put him through a social skills boot camp. And given Derrick’s profession, he didn’t take the term “boot camp” lightly. Derrick’s father, a local fighting legend back in the day, had owned another boxing gym south of town for the past twenty years. Derrick, who had just turned thirty, described the original gym: “There are world-class fighters training next to students, blue-collar guys, corporate execs, soccer moms, and street punks. It’s basically the United Nations of boxing.” The new gym was their first attempt at expansion. Derrick’s dad put him in charge of the new location.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Of course, not everything has to be officially on your Challenge List—you can do little challenges on the fly, too. Recently, my four-year-old’s backpack somehow got left at his preschool. Later that night, realizing it wasn’t in the house or in the car and not wanting to face a thermos of moldering spaghetti the next morning, I zipped over to the school to get it. As I pulled into the unusually crowded parking lot, through the school’s big plate-glass windows I could see there was an all-staff meeting going on. I realized I would have to walk past the entire staff of the school, including the director and all my son’s teachers, in order to get his backpack. I sat in the car for a moment with a strong urge to head back home. But I muttered to myself, “Do it before you’re confident,” and got out of the car. I went in, walked past everyone with a wave and a smile, grabbed his pack, and started to head out. His favorite teacher was sitting by the door. She smiled and waved. I forgot this, I mouthed. “No problem,” she whispered. “See you tomorrow.” In short, totally anticlimactic. I even forgot to tell my husband about it when I got home. Challenge by challenge, I keep learning that consequences are never what they seem. And even if something went wrong, I could handle it. And guess what? You could, too. THE CHALLENGE LIST, PHASE TWO: LETTING GO OF THE LIFE PRESERVER As you work through your Challenge List, don’t worry if you start to feel a little stuck. Many others, including me, have been there. They’re doing everything right—they’ll go all in and be brave. They’ll sit on their front stoop and play guitar until they run out of songs. They’ll walk into that networking event with their head held high. They’ll stick it out at the party until they’re the last woman standing. But then they’ll go home disappointed. “I did it, which I know is what counts, but I felt lousy the whole time,” they’ll lament. “My anxiety didn’t go down at all.” Don’t fret; this happens all the time. You’re willing to climb the mountain, so why don’t you slide down the other side? The answer: you may be hindering yourself without even realizing it. How? Enter Dr. Lynn Alden of the University of British Columbia. Dr. Alden has been studying social anxiety for almost forty years. With her former student Dr. Charles Taylor, now on the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, they are a dynamic duo of social anxiety research. When I spoke with them, Dr. Alden told me a story about a female client she once worked with. Let’s call her Beth. “Whenever a man Beth found attractive was in the vicinity, she would leave the room. And imagine what you would think if you were that man—if you walked in a room and Beth immediately stood up and left, every time.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I would check in at the office and request room 24 and get the key. Adele would be standing outside room 23 when I returned. The door would be ajar—I would have left it ajar—so she would have been able to glance at the arrangement of magazines and the washcloth on the end of the bed during my brief absence if she wanted to. “There, all set,” I would tell her. I would noisily slap all the magazines in a big pile and cover the top one with the washcloth and carry them out to my new room. Again I would say, “I’m terribly sorry for the dreadful mix-up.” “That’s quite all right,” she would say. She would be very unflappable and pleasant. We would wave good-night. In my room, I would throw myself on the bed and sigh with relief—nothing bad had happened! I would think that I should ask her out for a bite to eat, since it was dinner time. I better ask her out right now, I would say to myself, before she gets undressed or has a shower, while we are both still in the ceremonially friendly mood-envelope. I would hop up—and then I would think better of it. The problem would be that I was right on the brink of being perceived as a threat by her, and I wouldn’t be able to risk seeming sinister or sleazy by making any advances now. And I wouldn’t have to. The fact that we were in side-by-side rooms would feel increasingly relevant as the evening progressed: time would be on my side. I would lie back on the bed with my hands on my forehead, listening to the sounds from her room. Despite the doors connecting us, her room would turn out to be surprisingly uneavesdroppable-on. I would hear her water run for a while—perhaps a very quick shower, more likely a face-wash and a toothbrushing. Fifteen minutes would pass. I would hear her unlock several locks and go outside. She would be on her way to dinner. I would wait and then Drop and hide behind a corner and watch her. She would decide to dine at the lugubrious woodgrain-Formica-and-waitresses-with-Early-American-bonnets restaurant that was linked to the motel, just because she was tired and it was close by. I would buy a local paper from a machine and go inside and take a menu and sit down somewhere, ignoring the PLEASE WAIT FOR HOSTESS TO SEAT YOU sign, and then I would stop meddling with time. I would be deep into menu-parsing when Adele walked in. There would be very few folks in the restaurant. The hostess would seat Adele at a nearby table. When Adele said, “Thanks,” I would look up with pleased surprise. I would say hello.

• From Bold Move

  I asked Janet to consider a situation where her best friend was experiencing a similar issue and asked what she would tell her. Janet smiled and told me, “I would tell Pam she has given everything for her job and that she had met all her quotas, so she ought to ask for the raise she so clearly deserves.” Interpret your answers:How do these answers change my prediction?Janet told me that if she were to continue to believe her current lenses, she would never ask for a raise. But by looking at it through her friend’s eyes, she could see how she likely deserved a raise, which made her initial fear and anxiety decrease. What might I want to do differently?If she could believe what her friends have told her, she would ask for a raise. Updated lenses:How will this prediction change my core belief?Janet realized that she cannot be “worthless” and still do well at work. How does updating my lenses make me feel?Janet felt relief by considering another way of seeing the world. What steps can I take to strengthen this prediction pathway?Janet decided to keep track daily of any actions she did that went against her belief that she was “worthless” so as to collect information that could contradict her own core belief. Janet’s OutcomeJanet committed to doing this reflection like reps in the gym, striving to really Shift how she spoke to herself. At first, it felt unnatural, but eventually she was able to change the narrative that she was worthless. By doing so, Janet was finally able to not only ask for a raise, but also advocate for a promotion, which she received. Janet told me that she no longer felt like a prisoner to her old beliefs and, as such, she was allowing herself for the first time to dream about possibilities of pursuing new career paths. It wasn’t easy or without discomfort, but she realized that anxiety was not what was keeping her stuck: it was the avoidance that occurred every time she took the easy way out, leading her back to her prior beliefs and patterns instead of questioning them like any good detective. But not everything is all rosy. Every so often, she still falls prey to those same old beliefs. Only now they don’t hold as much power over her.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Cantwell Smith was one of the first theologians to make all this clear to me, in such books as Faith and Belief and Belief in History. I remember the extraordinary sense of relief I felt when I read in his somewhat dry, scholarly prose that our ideas of God were man-made; that they could be nothing else; that it was a modern Western fallacy, dating only from the eighteenth century, to equate faith with accepting certain intellectual propositions about God. Faith was really the cultivation of a conviction that life had some ultimate meaning and value, despite the tragic evidence to the contrary—an attitude also evoked by great art. The Middle English word beleven originally meant “to love”; and the Latin credo (“I believe”) probably derived from the phrase cor do: “I give my heart.” Saint Anselm of Canterbury had written, “Credo ut intellegam,” usually translated “I believe in order that I may understand.” I had always assumed that this meant that I had to discipline my rebellious mind and force it to bow to the official orthodoxy, and that as a result of this submission, I would learn to understand a higher truth. This had been the foundation of my training in the convent. But no, Cantwell Smith explained, “Credo ut intellegam” should be translated “I commit myself in order that I may understand.” You must first live in a certain way, and then you would encounter within a sacred presence that which monotheists call God, but which others have called the Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana. But did that mean that we could think what we liked about God? No. Here again, the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads. In killing Muslims and Jews in the name of God, the Crusaders had simply projected their own fear and loathing onto a deity which they had created in their own image and likeness, thereby giving this hatred a seal of absolute approval. A personalized God can easily lead to this type of idolatry, which is why the more thoughtful Jews, Christians, and Muslims insisted that while you could begin by thinking of God as a person, God transcended personality as “he” went beyond all other human categories.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  power to manipulate or hurt you. The estranged friends who tried to ruin your reputation. The business partner who stole from you. The family member who abused you when you were a child. This prayer may be the most difficult prayer in this chapter. It also may be the truest test of how well we are learning to live like Christ. After all, He lived this. On the cross, dying in agony, His only words regarding those who had hurt Him were a prayer: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus is asking us to take forgiveness all the way to the extreme of actively seeking the good of those who have hurt us. At this point you’re probably saying, “That’s not fair!” No, it’s not. That’s the point. God doesn’t treat us fairly, or we’d all be dead. His treatment of us isn’t based on our actions but on His character. That’s what He is calling us to do as well. Easy? No. Fun? Not really. But it is one of the most liberating things you will ever do. We looked at the topic of forgiveness earlier, when we talked about bitter prayers and other ineffective ways of praying. Please don’t misunderstand me—I don’t believe that forgiving your enemies means pretending they are your friends or ignoring the harm they have done. It doesn’t mean burying your trauma or silencing your voice. That is toxic forgiveness, and it doesn’t do anybody any good. But you can turn your enemies over to God. That’s what Jesus did: He recognized that the ultimate judge was God. He didn’t have to carry the burden of judging them or punishing them. Paul encourages the Roman believers not to get even with their enemies because the Bible says, “‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Since God will handle the revenge part, Paul continues, “‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:20–21).

• From Wild (2012)

  The next morning I came to a road. I’d crossed smaller, rougher jeep roads in the previous days that were buried in snow, but none so wide and definitive as this. I almost fell to my knees at the sight of it. The beauty of the snowy mountains was incontestable, but the road was my people. If it was the one I believed it to be, simply arriving there was a victory. It meant I’d followed the path of the PCT. It also meant that there was a town miles away in either direction. I could turn left or right and follow it, and I’d be delivered to a version of early July that made sense to me. I took off my pack and sat down on a grainy mound of snow, pondering what to do. If I was where I thought I was, I’d covered forty-three miles of the PCT in the four days since I’d left Sierra City, though I’d probably hiked more than that, given my shaky abilities with map and compass. Belden Town was another fifty-five mostly snow-covered trail miles away. It was hardly worth thinking about. I had only a few days’ worth of food left in my pack. I’d run out if I tried to push on. I began walking down the road in the direction of a town called Quincy. The road was like the wilderness I’d been hiking through the last several days, silent and snow-covered, only now I didn’t have to stop every few minutes to figure out where I was going. I only followed it down, as the snow gave way to mud. My guidebook didn’t say how far away Quincy was, only that it was “a long day’s walk.” I quickened my pace, hoping to reach it by evening, though what I was going to do there with only sixty cents was another question. By eleven I rounded a bend and saw a green SUV parked on the side of the road. “Hello,” I called, altogether more cautiously than I had in the times I’d bellowed that same word across the white desolation. No one answered. I approached the SUV and looked inside. There was a hooded sweatshirt lying across the front seat and a cardboard coffee cup on the dash, among other thrilling objects reminiscent of my former life. I continued walking down the road for a half hour, until I heard a car approaching behind me and turned. It was the green SUV. A few moments later, it came to a halt beside me, a man at the wheel and a woman in the passenger seat.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But this remote literary echo was the only reference to religion for me that Easter. For the first time in my life, I took no part in the rituals of Holy Week: the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, the Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, and the solemn Mass of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. The strange thing was that I did not feel at all odd. I experienced no nostalgia and no guilt during my first wholly secular Easter. In fact, I felt a good deal better. The beauty of my surroundings and the general goodwill of the Harts and their guests were healing me in a way that religion had never done. In my first years with the Harts, I used to make the effort to hear Mass every Sunday at the Catholic Church in Mevagissey, which meant getting up extremely early and walking five miles over the cliffs. It had been a pleasant walk, even though I’d had to brave a field full of bullocks and sometimes tore my clothes on barbed-wire fences. The service itself, however, was less rewarding, the words of the Mass soullessly intoned by a priest who seemed bored and irritated with his congregation of holidaymakers, who were patently longing to get back to the beach as quickly as possible.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  It must be paradoxical, to remind us that God cannot be contained in a neat, coherent system of thought; and it must be apophatic, that is, it should lead us to a moment of silent awe or wonder, because when we are speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do. Cantwell Smith was one of the first theologians to make all this clear to me, in such books as Faith and Belief and Belief in History. I remember the extraordinary sense of relief I felt when I read in his somewhat dry, scholarly prose that our ideas of God were man-made; that they could be nothing else; that it was a modern Western fallacy, dating only from the eighteenth century, to equate faith with accepting certain intellectual propositions about God. Faith was really the cultivation of a conviction that life had some ultimate meaning and value, despite the tragic evidence to the contrary—an attitude also evoked by great art. The Middle English word beleven originally meant “to love”; and the Latin credo (“I believe”) probably derived from the phrase cor do: “I give my heart.” Saint Anselm of Canterbury had written, “Credo ut intellegam,” usually translated “I believe in order that I may understand.” I had always assumed that this meant that I had to discipline my rebellious mind and force it to bow to the official orthodoxy, and that as a result of this submission, I would learn to understand a higher truth. This had been the foundation of my training in the convent. But no, Cantwell Smith explained, “Credo ut intellegam” should be translated “I commit myself in order that I may understand.” You must first live in a certain way, and then you would encounter within a sacred presence that which monotheists call God, but which others have called the Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana. But did that mean that we could think what we liked about God? No. Here again, the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (NLT, emphasis added) Notice the direct connection between taking our worries to God in prayer and receiving His peace, which is a peace that “exceeds anything we can understand,” a peace that “will guard [our] hearts and minds.” Paul says that when you feel anxious, that’s a sign you need to pray. And when you pray, you receive peace. I often go to prayer thinking I need results—but I come away from prayer with peace. And that is far better. Why? Because answered prayer only produces temporary peace and momentary relief. It’s wonderful when it happens, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that more problems are around the corner. The peace of God, however, supersedes my circumstances. It assures me that even if my immediate situation hasn’t changed, God is bigger than that situation, and He is worthy of my trust. Maybe I’ll get the answer I want from my prayer, maybe I won’t. But I have peace. And that peace is enough. I still pray for what I need and want, of course, but I don’t try to get my peace from answered prayer. I get my peace from God. He is the source of the answers. He is the focus of my hope. He is the only one big enough to truly take care of me and my loved ones. No matter how bizarre or nerve-wracking life gets, God doesn’t change. And since I know Him, I know peace. If you’ve looked at prayer as mostly about begging God for what you want or need, it’s time to change your focus. Don’t just seek answers. Seek peace. And don’t just seek any peace. Seek the peace that exceeds understanding, the peace that comes from the God of peace himself. So yes, go on roller coasters, if that’s your thing. And if you have kids, play hide-and-seek with them and teach them the fine art of scaring each other half to death. But don’t lose your peace. Don’t let the cares and worries of an uncertain world overwhelm the calm assurance that God is with you. You have a Father in heaven who knows you, cares about you, and watches over you. He alone can bring rest to your soul, and that rest is always available through prayer. Don’t worry yourself to death. Pray yourself to peace.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  his soul. That doesn’t mean anything changed in the outside world, but everything had changed in his inside world. That was what mattered most. These five things—pain, processing, prayer, proclamation, peace—are intuitive parts of prayer. They don’t always happen in this order, and they are often cyclical, not linear: you cry out, then you ask for help, then you come to a place of trust and rest . . . and then another wave of pain crashes over you, and the cycle repeats. But with each cycle, you find more stability and peace, like an upward spiral out of the depths. Again, your prayers don’t have to follow this pattern. They definitely don’t have to include so many metaphors and poetic language. But they will almost always involve some sort of process, some sort of progression. You’ll come out on the other side with greater clarity and strength than before. EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY PRAYERS Peter Scazzero writes in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, “Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly—to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you.” 1 He’s right. It’s not enough to just have faith or to pursue holiness or to study theology. We also have to be healthy on the inside, particularly in regard to our emotions. We are wholistic beings: body, soul, and spirit. Mind, will, and emotions. If one part of our self is hurting, sooner or later it will affect the others. Sometimes Christians are the worst at admitting emotional needs. We tend to think that faith means always being up and never being down. We don’t give ourselves space to grieve, to emote, to vent, to rage, to hurt, to cry. Life has a lot of trauma, though. If we don’t process that trauma, it can deposit layers of hurt in our souls. We often create defense mechanisms or survival techniques just to keep it all together. But deep inside, we are not in a good place.