Getting bumped

I'm living a new reality; having got married, gotten my wife pregnant, bought a house, lost a baby, become a pastor (and all the ups and downs that come with living life in general)... all in a year and a half.

So you can't REALLY blame me for being a little introspective.

So when someone recently said to me, "what you put in is what spills out when you get bumped'. I took it to heart and was like, 'what spills out of me when I get bumped?'

Well...quiet rage, a desire to 'work' my way out of the situation, a need to 'control' the situation, a backlash of vibrato against fear, not admitting fear, pride about the things I've accomplished (as a way of controlling the situation), shutting down emotionally. Needing to 'be a man'.

I actually think the question should become more like, ' so Mike, what do you do when it hurts?' Well I wish I had an easy answer (now that I've dealt with some real pain, lived some life, acquired some scars from life...)

If I was pushed to answer, I'd have to say: Don't try to work the pain away.

Here's the key:

Embrace the joy and linger with it.

Embrace the pain and endure it.

It's in facing it head-on that you get to the other side. It might be scary and seem dangerous to look at, but to look away is not the way we're instructed to do it.

It takes courage to do it. A friend of mine said it really well,

'Courage doesn't mean FEARLESS, it can mean totally fearful, but doing it anyway'.

If there's one thing that I've learned from the last year and a half, its that life is one fight after another. It's not in knowing that the next fight is coming, it's in knowing how to KEEP fighting...

What builds you up? What things inspire you? What things make you want to get out of bed in the morning?

It's the act of pursuing those things that you get to KEEP fighting!

The hope in all this comes like my gray hair... it's that I become less of who I am by nature, and more of 'who I'm suppose to be'... hopefully that need to be a 'man', or need to control the situation, fighting the pain, or emotional shutdown are not what spill out when I get bumped. Rather, it'll be emotional vulnerability, acceptance of pain, giving control over (or seeming control) of those situations I can't control, that I see spilling out.

Now, you know the question was comin' your way...

What' spills out when you get bumped??