Careful What You Pray For

from the archives--sort of

So, for this month’s exercise with an archived piece, I went to update a version of another from 2024 that was titled, This Shouldn’t Be Happening. One that I’m certain was an uncomfortable read for many. I went in with a plan to keep the original article mostly intact, rewriting short sections that I would phrase differently now. Instead, a rather different piece emerged, keeping really only the first few lines and continuing to refer to Neufeld’s Traffic Circle to support understanding of how human’s evolve as individuals.

Have you heard this before? (An SMP community member stumbled across it and shared it with us but was unsure who to credit.)

Humans can tolerate just about anything as long as they don’t believe it shouldn’t be happening.

Whether or not it should be happening doesn’t change the fact that it is happening. On the other side of acceptance is new creative energy to support us to explore possible paths forward, paths that were previously beyond our awareness.

I’ve found Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s Traffic Circle Model of Frustration to be incredibly helpful in illustrating how our primal emotions drive both human progress and adaptation, as well as human-to-human conflict, even violence. Here’s the diagram along with an explanation of my understanding:

Frustration is the primal emotion we feel when a circumstance in our life is not working for us. We’re driven by our frustration to attempt to change it. If we’re successful, our frustration goes away (we exit at the first offramp) and we can move on with our lives. (Changing external circumstances drives Progress)

When we’re unable to change the circumstance, we’re invited to change ourselves as we encounter what Neufeld describes as futility: and if our hearts are soft and conditions conducive, we’re able to grieve the thing we desperately want but don’t get to have. Often, once we let go and accept the reality of our situation, new energy and possibilities emerge. (Changing ourselves is Adaptation)

If we are defended against vulnerability, or conditions don’t feel safe enough for us to “let go”--not an intention but a surrender, we remain in the experience of frustration with only one more offramp out of this (purposefully?) intolerable emotion: aggression or attacking energy. Here’s where blame comes in and gives us a way to discharge these mounting uncomfortable feelings.

Hopefully, it’s possible to liken the first two offramps to the Serenity Prayer? The “serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can…” Let’s come back to wisdom in a moment…

Up until recently, I’ve insisted that the SMP is less about parenting and more about personal growth. I now realize that nothing offers richer context for personal growth than parenting, and that if we’re open to it, the most difficult parts of this sacred duty can result in growth spurts toward our own maturity. Parenting will humble us, mess with our identities, and invite us to inventory which attitudes are still working for us and which need to evolve or die off. This can be tricky territory to explore for those who feel trapped in the Traffic Circle.

The SMP online community aims to help create the conditions that allow for adaptation. Yet, parenting is such a tender topic and many of us are not well-practiced in the art and generosity of offering ourselves grace. Many will and do find it challenging to adapt to the different way we explore what’s happening in ourselves and with our children in the SMP’s private, online community for moms navigating these strange times and parenting kids who’ve assumed trans-identities.

It takes tremendous courage to be willing to turn inward when external circumstances feel so excruciatingly painful. To explore difficult topics and perspectives can seem threatening at first, but ultimately, they may be the only way to restore our agency. Often, it’s only when we can no longer tolerate how it feels to be victims, to feel impotent in the face of futility, that we will submit to this inner work. At least this was how it was for me, and I know many see the SMP as “the last house on the block.”

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. -C.G. Jung

I promised to return to that last line of the Serenity Prayer: “the wisdom to know the difference.” I think this one can create confusion and self-doubt, especially when it feels like we’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and there are no easy answers. Humans have made so much “progress” in our capacity to shape our own lives and change the course of things—a.k.a. external circumstances—which in times past would just be considered fate. As a result, it can be vexing to know when to let go of something we’ve been desperately clinging to.

If I may be so bold to offer an alternative line to update this prayer? Perhaps, it would make more sense in today’s world if we went with something like, “The wisdom to tolerate the paradox.” Or “The wisdom to hold mixed feelings.” Maybe we ought not beat ourselves up when it’s not obvious which external circumstances will lend themselves to change. Or when the personal cost of focusing on that change is too high.

I think we can mostly agree that another word for wisdom might be maturity. Might it be more wise to notice when we’re stuck in black and white thinking? When we’re compelled to exit our frustration through the off-ramp of blame and aggression? Or when we’ve stopped seeing those who oppose our views as fellow suffering humans?

What if what the world really needs is more maturity and open-heartedness? More of the conditions that allow for vulnerability, so our children wouldn’t feel the need to cloak themselves in emotional armor? So we don’t feel this same need…? What conditions are necessary for us to feel safe enough to lay down our arms and open our hearts?

One of the gifts of futility, disappointment, grief, loss, sadness–all these feelings we work so hard to avoid–is the necessary humility to see ourselves as fully human, which in turn allows us to truly see others. We think we can rid the world of suffering and the parts of ourselves we’ve judged as bad, but to do so is to change our very essence and rid ourselves of our humanity. It is suffering that connects us, full self-acceptance that creates deep compassion, and the capacity for grief that allows for true intimacy, lighting up the path toward wholeness.

If we’re able to allow devastation to break us open, then and only then, can we transcend fear and allow the full richness of life to become available to us. We discover new energy, we now recognize the exquisiteness of the present moment, we can tolerate more extreme emotions, and we can hear our own heartsong that was previously drowned out by all the external noise.

Of course, we want to spare our children suffering! Yet, ultimately, there’s only so much that we can or ought to shield them from. If we let our own suffering evolve us, we come to see this. We can loosen our grip on their outcomes and have faith in their capacity to survive painful choices (which may be among the most important messages we can transmit to them now.)

When we can let go and drop into adaptation, we grow bigger and more resilient, while also keeping our heart soft and flexible. This actually creates the conditions that enable our children to hear us. By releasing them, we signal that they aren’t responsible for our experience which results in them being more likely to trust us and our intentions. It repositions us as a faithful guide rather than as an enemy.

How about this as an updated line: “the wisdom to know what’s ours and what isn’t”? Or maybe “to know the difference” is meant to imply this?

Just what does wisdom really do for us anyway? I think It frees us. Not from pain and suffering, but from the weight of the world. It frees us. It opens us. It gives us the capacity to live and love deeply and authentically, instead of hiding behind masks and always moving away from the things that scare us. It invites us to be okay with vulnerability and to be our whole, messy, miraculous selves—and lets others do the same.

Humans can tolerate just about anything as long as they don’t believe it shouldn’t be happening.

Maybe wisdom allows us to not get stuck in the “this shouldn’t be happening” mindset? To recognize when our efforts to change external circumstances are futile or don’t align well with our highest values?

Hmm, maybe serenity, courage, and wisdom are not things that can even be granted? Maybe they’re the qualities that emerge when our hearts are broken open and we let the devastation grow us up.

I know I found myself uttering the Serenity Prayer often in the darkest days, and it was certainly comforting. Now, I’m reminded of a passage about prayer I stumbled across in another Substack recently. I might tweak it slightly as well. My notes are in parentheses…

I asked for strength

And God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for wisdom

And God gave me problems to learn to solve. (Or perhaps unsolvable problems to transcend?)

…

I asked for courage

And God gave me dangers (and obstacles) to overcome.

I asked for love

And God gave me people to help. (Or as my mom would likely say, “people to serve.” To really learn to love, I’ll bet God gives us difficult people.)

(I asked for serenity

And God gave me painful situations to grapple with so I could learn to love and listen to myself.)

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

Serenity, courage, wisdom. Maybe these only come to us on the other side of Life’s most devastating lessons?