A Safe Place to Vomit My Heart

I returned to counseling last week for the first time in six months. Counseling, therapy — I never know what to call it.

How about a safe place to vomit my heart?

I decided to switch counselors from the spring. Not because my former counselor was “bad,” but because I think I needed something more. More active, more intentional. A different person with a different personality could be helpful, sure, but above all, I’ve sorely needed two things.

Scripture and Jesus.

It’s a biblically-based counseling center, and even after just one session I feel enriched: a session bookended with prayer as I shared the overview of my story. I started choking up after just twenty minutes, and I take that as a good sign since it took me eight sessions to cry with my previous counselor.

Crying = good.

2019 has been the most disruptive year of my life, even more than 2018, the previously most disruptive year of my life. A year of resets and pause buttons and more resets, learning healthy new rhythms and placing my things into storage and wandering longer than anticipated, putting many of my projects and faith practices on hold along the way.

Future books on hiatus.

Weeks without church.

Months without Scripture.

This summer, I felt like I didn’t have the mental or spiritual capacity to engage with writing and the Word. Even my prayer life felt inconsistent. It all just sorta went on the back-burner until I could hold an address again. Whether that’s understandable or reasonable or not, it’s what happened.

Now that I’m officially an Asheville resident again, I see my life as a dusty DeLorean that I just whipped a giant tarp off of. I’m blowing the dust off as I make an echoey apartment my home. I’m flipping switches on this machine, seeing lights turn from orange to green as I reengage long dormant practices.

CrossFit.

Writing.

Your Other Brothers.

Scripture.

And now counseling.

“I’d like you to read 1 Corinthians 10:13 for me,” my counselor said.

I smiled. This is all so new and different, I thought. Reading Scripture? At counseling?

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (ESV)

Oh man. This verse.

I’ve never presumed to think God would erase my temptations or struggles at large, sexual or otherwise. He could. Certainly, he could.

But I’ve always been a fairly practical person. We live in a fallen world. We’re going to struggle. Sometimes, we’re going to struggle very much.

I’m not asking God for perfection. For a pre-Paradise.

But I guess a tad more supernatural assistance would be appreciated. Or at least a deeper awakening to my own self-destructive tendencies.

I’m realizing I bring much of my struggle on myself. I do things or don’t do things, even little things, that produce unnecessary tension.

Even something as simple and stupid as really needing to pee — I’ll race home and set down my things and turn on a light and change my clothes and put something on the stove before I finally sprint to the bathroom to relieve myself.

Like, why don’t I just freaking pee as soon as I get home??

I’m also realizing I’ve not set good boundaries. I set myself up for poor choices and results. Over and over. An escalating cycle of stagnancy and a rewiring of my brain that isn’t good for me.

That last line of the verse stands out: that you may be able to endure it.

I feel as though most of my life has been enduring. Enduring high school. Enduring college. Enduring adulthood. Enduring unexpected and unwanted change.

Enduring is so engrained with the Enneagram Four. Especially with the self-preservation subtype.

Don’t make a big deal of things. Just silently endure.

Endure, endure, endure.

And so I guess it’s no surprise I started choking up at my first new counseling session. I’m the valedictorian, the good kid, the guy who helped launch YOB and keeps it going. I’ve been silently enduring for a long time.

“What does this verse mean to you?” my counselor asked me.

I paused, stared at the words. That last line. “I don’t doubt the truth of Scripture. But I struggle to see this way of escape over struggles I’ve had my entire adult life.”

My counselor nodded.

It felt good to say that aloud. To not be judged for it.

And hopefully, now, to work through it. I want to properly endure life’s struggles, rather than surrender immediately to them.

And I want to be more open about my struggles with those closest to me. More than I have been or more than you’d think I’ve been as “the struggle guy” who wrote the book on struggle.

I truly want to struggle well, as I close all my emails to readers.

I’ve got a lot more dusting off to do back in Asheville. Several more switches to flip to get this machine fully operational again.

Counseling. It feels like the flux capacitor of this whole thing. I’m hopeful for some hard growth in this familiar, new arena. For hope like magic to flow through these rewired veins in the months to come.