How can you change a feeling?

Don't you hate it when someone tells you to stop being jealous? To not be angry? To just feel thankful? To stop feeling attracted to the wrong person???


Sure, it's easy for them to say, it's easy for anyone to say, but how do you stop yourself feeling a feeling? You see someone with the thing you badly want...is it possible to just flick a switch and not want it? Somebody insults you...can you just ignore the feeling of wanting to throw a chair at them? Can you just turn your feelings off? Well, I guess you probably can, but that's called apathy and that's a whole other issue. 


What I've learned is that maybe you can't stop yourself feeling the feelings and maybe, really...maybe it's not wrong to feel them. I suppose it's more about what you do with them. Is it wrong for me to feel jealousy? Maybe not. Is it wrong for me to ignore or abuse the person I'm jealous of? Of course! Is it wrong for me to be angry when someone offends me? Nope. Is it wrong for me to actually throw a chair at them? I probably don't need to answer that. 


I've also learned that you can flip that theory around. Take gratitude. Can you make yourself feel thankful? I think you can. Because I think that sometimes, if you do what you would do when you felt what you should feel, you can start to feel that way.

When I used to feel jealous, in the worst times, when I actually felt like I was in pain from my lack of what others had, I would say to myself over and over, “my cup overflows, MY cup overflows”, but at that stage they were just words. I was so easily blinded. I didn’t see the friends I had as blessings, I didn’t appreciate my dad, my mum, my sister, I wouldn’t recognise what a gift it was to have the ability and the means to go to university to study a degree that could get me a good career. I expected the gratitude to just descend on me and change my thinking instantly.

But I’ve come to learn that it takes practise. So, although I didn't feel thankful, I started being thankful. And not just generally, not just, “thank you for my friends, thank you for my family, thank you for helping me study”, but specifics. “Thank you for that time when Cat plastered my room with encouraging verses, thank you that my mum will drive for 2 hours to pick me up from the airport, thank you for that letter from Lynne that came at exactly the right time.”

I found it pretty amazing how quickly the feeling of gratitude grew and the feeling of jealousy shrank when I started to do what I would do...

 ...if the gratitude was what I felt. 

Friends like these...

I found this quote today...


"Friendship is like wetting your pants - everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth"


But that's just a little side note...


I've had a few good ol' friends in my 28 years. I've messed up a few friendships too. I've been a good friend at times. I've been a pretty poor friend at times. I have friends that I've known for over 15 years. I have friends that I've known only a few months but expect to know for many more years.


I've learned a lot about friendship over the years. Some of it, I've learned the hard way.


One of the biggest things I've learned is that every friendship will be difficult at some point. I think good friendship is a really powerful thing, with the potential to change people, to change situations, maybe even to change the world! And I think that anything with that much power is going to be hard work somewhere along the line. 


One of my biggest problems in friendships has been jealousy. I've had good friends, people who I've been really close to, who I've messed things up with because I can't get past comparing myself to them and being jealous when I come out second best. People who are friendlier, prettier, more popular, smarter, better at tennis, holier, more talented. People who have got the job or got the guy and I've struggled to get past it. 


For years, I have run away from friendships when they get too hard. When I get too jealous, when I can't handle being second best, when I realise my friend can't meet my needs, when they hurt me, when I hurt them, I leave. Sometimes physically - moving to a new school or a new country. Sometimes just emotionally - retreating form the friendship, avoiding them, being awkward when I'm with them. 


But I'm done with that.


I'm over it.


The more I go through life, the more I see how important friends are, the more I see how everything can be stacked against friendship, the more I see they take work and the more I see how much they are worth it.

Fix me: Part 2

Can you fix me?


Long before I admitted I was broken, I spent a lot of time asking other people to fix me. I didn't even realise it.


In my teens, I moped. I was an excellent moper, an expert, some might say. When I was feeling a little down, a little in need of some sympathy, I knew exactly how to position myself - slightly out of the way of a group, alone but in the line of sight of key people. I would tell myself that I just wanted to be left alone, but really, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted everyone to see poor, sad Pip with her sad, broken heart. Moping.


But I can't congratulate myself too quickly on getting over that. I don't mope so much, but my sympathy-seeking has merely changed its form. When I find myself walking home from work, or driving to rugby training or sitting on my bed saying, “it’s not fair, it’s too difficult, everybody else has someone to rely on, someone to comfort them, I’m on my own and I hate it”, I'll text someone. Not to tell them that there's something wrong but so we can have a conversation that makes me feel better. In my head, it goes a little something like this...

I’ll text them something pretty normal, just asking how their day has been. They’ll reply and ask me the same. I’ll tell them that it hasn’t been the best day. They’ll ask me what is wrong. I’ll tell them. They’ll have the perfect answer and the perfect words and ultimately, come rushing over to make sure I’m ok. 

That’s how the script goes in my head.

Unfortunately, other people don't see the script in my head, so they only reply 2 hours later, or they tell me all about their day and don't ask about mine or any number of other normal things. Then I get frustrated with them, I feel let down, misunderstood, more alone, more unhappy.

I'm pretty sure it happens in a lot of relationships (and I use that word to mean friends, family, couples) all the time - two broken people come together and expect the other person to make them whole, but no person can ever do that. Sure, they can make us smile, they can make us feel better for a while (there has to be a song lyric in there somewhere), maybe they can even point us towards the solution, but there is no way they can get deep enough into the root of the problem to be the solution.

So, we stand there alone, crying louder and louder and louder , somebody, anybody, fix me!

But it's only when we realise that a relationship, another person cannot be the solution that we can have any sort of functioning relationship. It's only when we turn our eyes and our aches away from ourselves and away from each other and turn them towards God that we can begin to become whole and our relationships can be restored. 

Of course we can help each other, love and care for each other and there's nothing wrong with asking that of other people.

But asking them to be for us what only God can be...

Fix me: Part 1

When trying harder doesn't work

Wholeness. Completeness. Perfection. Fullness. Abundance. I have a long way to go. I'm a long way off. Here, as I am, broken, shattered, lost, hurt, tarnished. 

I can see it all the time. The brokenness shows in the things I think, the hurtful things I say, the selfish things I do, my attitude, which often leaves a lot to be desired. I don't want to think and say and do those things and usually, they end up breaking me a bit more. I want to be whole. And I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to attain that wholeness

I've tried running away, tried clinging to other people, tried being a perfectionist. I've tried and tried, harder and harder, scratching and clawing to try to achieve completeness.

I could give you a lot of examples. Here's a wee one for you...

A few years ago, my thoughts were consumed with wanting a boyfriend, something which, I now see, came from loneliness, a fear of being alone forever and a belief that once I had someone, then I would be whole.

It started to affect the way I treated people - jealousy and bitterness were pretty common emotions for me. I could see that it wasn't good but I didn't acknowledge that there might be deeper issues. I just told myself I was wrong and I needed to fix it.

Thus was born "Man Ban"- six months in which I would not think about boys, would not daydream about them, would not seek affection from them. Somehow, my logic told me that if I deprived myself of something, I would stop wanting it. Hmmm.

L o o o o o o o ng story short, I reached the end of six months a bit more broken. Maybe I did stop thinking so much about having a boyfriend, but it was less out of wholeness and more out of hopelessness. If I'm honest, I believed that I was doing such a good thing that surely God would reward me with a boyfriend at the end. Which sort of negated the whole exercise.

I can see now that I wasn't honest with myself. I think I didn't even really know myself very well. And that's the thing. God knows me. Forgive the cheesy Christian metaphor, but He wrote the instruction manual and over the last few years, He has orchestrated the healing to an extent I never thought possible and in ways I would never have planned for myself.

At the right times, the right people have come into my life. Challenges have come only at the times when I've been equipped to deal with them. The control has been taken out of my hands into much more capable hands. 

I haven't been totally passive. It took a long time for me even to position myself in the right place to follow, but when I did that, when I stopped kicking and punching and fighting, He started to lead me.

And now I'm getting there.

He's getting me there.