emotions Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

How “At Least . . .” Keeps Us From Reality

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 22, 2019
Post category:emotions relationships Uncategorized

A few weeks ago, I lamented a reality in my life. I would tell you what this reality was, but I honestly don’t remember. All I know is that my husband didn’t respond the way I hoped.

His response was, “Well, at least (this other thing) isn’t happening to you.” (Again, what was the other thing? I don’t know. But it didn’t help me).

And we both laughed.

Because we know by now that, as Brené Brown says, “At least . . . ” is rarely the beginning of an empathetic response. It’s a way to minimize or distract ourselves (or others) from the reality of what we’re facing.

Over the next few days, we both experienced more challenges that led us, either jokingly or absent-mindedly, to respond to one another with, “Well, at least . . .”

Each time, we caught ourselves. We saw how easy it is to evade our own or someone else’s pain by this kind of comparison.

Call it “putting things in perspective” or “choosing not to complain,” but really what we’re doing is dismissing our hearts, refusing to acknowledge reality.

In some ways, it’s a decent strategy. At times, it has protected us from being engulfed by sorrow. But if we know God, then we know there’s an opportunity here.

The opportunity is to invite Him to meet us in what is true. A prayer I learned recently from Ruth Haley Barton’s readings is, “Lord, humble me in the presence of reality.”

In other words, help me sit in this situation. Help me not to excuse or dismiss or pretend that things are better than they are.

Because I believe that You are greater than this. You can redeem. You can heal. This is not beyond you, therefore I can face it.

When we sit with God in our own reality, we increase our capacity to sit with others in theirs.

And when we refrain from our “at least . . .” responses with them, we leave space for them to do this same practice with God for themselves. Otherwise, our actions not only keep us from having to feel their pain, they actually keep them from meeting God in it.

So may we catch ourselves when we are tempted to compare suffering. If our sentences begin with “at least” may we pause.

Instead, let’s meet God in reality.

Holding Each Other (When We Want to Fix It)

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 27, 2019
Post category:emotions relationships

When her teammate went down in the middle of a game, our daughter immediately ran to her side. Her first aid training kicked in, and she tried in vain to get her friend to slow her breathing. Shock and pain overwhelmed her teammate, though, and all our girl could do was sit by and cry for her.

Afterward, she lamented her helplessness to me. “I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t do anything for her,” she sighed.

“You did the best thing you could. You were with her. She didn’t need you to fix her. She needed you to be there.”

Unconvinced, she continued, “But it was so hard to see her in pain, and I couldn’t help.”

And there is the heart of the issue.

Our Desire to Fix

When we see others in pain, something in us desires to help. That desire is good. It’s God-given.

But often our desire to help is really a desire to fix. It’s a desire for the bad situation to simply not be true.

It seems right, even good, to fix, doesn’t it? It feels like helping. Really, though, it’s usually avoiding. We struggle to sit in places of shalom shattered, both for ourselves and others.

It reminds us that we are not in control. We feel our helplessness. We feel their pain.

Yet there’s something we can offer in these moments that is precious and valuable. We can offer our presence. And that can be enough.

Offering Our Presence

Recently I was in a small group for my spiritual formation program. We were asked to introduce ourselves to each other, and then sit in silence for two minutes afterward. One person shared quite vulnerably, even to the point of tears.

And after sharing, we sat there without saying a word to her. It felt both awful and right.

Awful, because we wanted to enter into her pain, to comfort and empathize, to say, “Yeah, I get that. Me too.”

But also right, because it meant no one spoke a word out of turn. No one offered platitudes or tried to rescue her from something God might be doing. It felt like enough to just be together, to be human with one another.

M. Craig Barnes, in his book, Yearnings, says, “We don’t mend each other’s brokenness, we just hold it tightly.”

What a relief! It’s not up to us to fix each other. While it’s hard to see someone else in pain, wrestling, confused, unsettled, whatever it is, we aren’t being asked to take it away. God has his eyes on all of us. He sees. He knows.

And so our invitation is to simply hold each other tightly. Be there. Be there right away. Cry with them. That is enough.

Related posts:

5 Reasons to Be a Burden

The Challenge to Rejoice and Weep with Others

Open the Door to Others

What Is Anger’s Real Name?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 11, 2018
Post category:emotions grief perspective

Sometimes on New Year’s Eve, when I’m feeling ambitious and intentional about our family relationships, we review the year together. One question we ask our kids is, “what’s one thing you learned this year?”

Our last year overseas, our then 10-year-old said, “I’ve learned that anger is a secondary emotion,” and I high fived myself.

Partly because it felt like I nailed something good in parenting, but mostly because I was glad our kids learned it so much sooner than I did.

It was something I learned that year too, mostly because I experienced a lot of it (we got a dog. It was hard. I got angry. Really angry).

Anger is a secondary emotion, meaning that it’s not all we’re feeling. When we’re angry, it’s usually because we’re feeling something else, something that feels vulnerable. So anger, which makes us feel big, covers the emotion that makes us feel small.

Anger was a theme that year for our whole family. It rose in me when we got our dog and everything in my life fell apart. Our daughter lived in it the summer before we moved back to the U.S.

For me, the anger covered shame, the shame of failure, of not living up to my image of a successful homeschooling, dog training missionary. Our daughter’s anger masked the fear she felt in being so completely out of control and sad in the process of leaving home.

What Anger Tells Us

Anger is a good barometer. We get angry when something we love feels threatened. Often it’s our image. Or it’s a way of life we’re trying to hold onto. Maybe our deepest desires feel threatened-our desire to be wanted, important, safe, right.

Anger doesn’t always show up as rage. In fact, often it doesn’t. It disguises itself as sarcasm, criticism, stubbornness, contempt. It slips out in clipped words and impatience.

Most of us don’t linger in anger for long. It feels wrong. We dismiss it, stifle it, or blow it off quickly, rather than allowing it to be a doorway into something deeper.

When we don’t linger, we never get to the bottom of what we’re really feeling. And we need to.

Because if we sit with our anger long enough, it will tell us its real name.

if we sit with our anger long enough, it will tell us its real name. Share on X

The Names of Anger

It might tell us its name is grief. Maybe shame. Fear. Fear of losing control, fear of not being enough. Weakness. Confusion. Despair. Beneath our anger is our true emotions that need to see the light of day so we can deal with them.

One fall, I was, in my husband’s words, “kind of mean.” That’s fair. (He was being gracious-there are stronger words he could use).

He said maybe I didn’t have much emotional margin after sending our son off to school, the prayer rollercoaster God took us on that summer, and the business of gearing up for a conference that fall that I was leading.

Regardless, I’m glad he said something. It gave me an opportunity to sit with my anger and see what it was hiding. It told me I felt unimportant, lonely, unheard, in certain areas. As I sat with those more raw emotions, my anger began to dissipate.

Don’t ignore anger. Pretending it doesn’t exist, or dismissing it without question robs us of the path to deeper emotional health and wholeheartedness. Sit with it. Dialogue with it. Let it tell you what you’re really feeling.

What is your anger’s real name?

Related posts:

Looking Scary (When We’re Scared)

When Fear Is a Dictator

When Grief Surprises You

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 11, 2018
Post category:grief transition

I’m in a season of grief right now. Oh, I’m not sad all the time. It surprises me, actually. It comes in waves, like the ocean.

I’ve become more acquainted with the ocean now that we live 45 minutes from it. I love walking along the beach at sunrise. The waves are so unpredictable. They surprise you sometimes, coming up further than you expect. You can’t predict them.

Sometimes the water stays far away. Other times it stretches out and touches your feet, even washing up to your ankles if you’re close enough.

That’s my experience of grief.

If only it were a linear, predictable process. Hard at first, and then gradually subsiding. Less and less over time, until you don’t feel it anymore. A clear timeline with a precise end date. You do your grieving and then you’re done, praise Jesus.

Instead, grief feels like a stranger popping out from behind doors at the most unexpected times.

When we walked onto the stage to stand with our son at graduation, I was surprisingly calm. Later, as one of his good friends stood there with her parents, I lost it.

When I have thought about graduation in the past weeks, I have felt more pride than sorrow. Then a week ago I read an email from friends overseas and the tears spilled over at how well they’re doing.

His graduation party was all joy, then last week I folded one of his never-to-be-worn-again uniform shirts and I broke down.

That’s the thing with grief-it’s all right there, but we can’t control or predict it.

I’m often frustrated by this unpredictable guest. Probably because it reminds me that I am not always doing as well as I would like (or like others) to think. It keeps me vulnerable, never knowing when a wave of grief might catch me off guard, when I might start crying about some random person’s life, when it’s really just touching my own.

But I’ve been learning these last few years that grief is a necessary companion. In fact, it is a doorway to wholeheartedness.

I know that part of the reason my grief comes out sideways is that I don’t want to deal with it. It’s easier to stay focused on my to do list, buying dorm essentials and harping on him to finish those thank you notes (I swear, he’s working on them), than to let the waves crash so hard I lose my footing.

But losing our footing in grief is what we must do sometimes. More and more I am learning to stop and walk straight into the waves. To let myself dwell on what we are losing, and how much it hurts to lose. To say a proper goodbye to this beautiful season we have lived.

When I do, I find that those waves don’t drown-they heal.

And I’m learning that I cannot navigate the waves alone. It’s easier to weather waves of grief when there are people walking beside us, holding us up. They hold our hands and make us brave as we walk into the waves. We need those people who will life preservers, keeping us afloat while we swim in the grief for a little while.

We can’t fight the waves. Instead, we can accept that they are a natural part of the journey. We can give space to our souls to process the grief when it comes. And we can invite others to hold space for us to feel all of it, so when the waves do come, we can swim.

Let the sorrow come and touch you. When we do that, we let ourselves be human. We live wholeheartedly. Let grief surprise.

Related posts:

Acquainted with Grief

Embracing Suffering

As the Ride Winds Down: Thoughts on the Last Moments of Childhood

Our Inside Out Moment

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 7, 2016
Post category:grief loved parenting

It started out rough, but it ended well, that day on the field. In fact, it called to mind a moment from Inside Out.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know there was a pivotal moment that formed one of the main character, Riley’s, core memories. It was the memory of her hockey team gathered around her cheering. What we learned later in the movie is that the moment happened because there were coming to cheer her up after a loss that crushed her. Here’s how it happened for us:

Our daughter’s soccer team played in the first of a series of three weekend tournaments a week ago. In order to progress to the next weekend, her team had to win their group of 4. I wrote the details of their weekend in my previous post. Suffice to say, they didn’t win.

My sweet girl met me after the game and promptly burst into tears. As I hugged her, she cried about how she had played poorly (not true) and how this meant they were out. I tried to remind her that everyone makes mistakes, it was a team effort, they played well, but she was, in a word, inconsolable.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that both her coaches had stopped and turned back, as had her teammates. Soon, one of her coaches stepped in to take her from me. He pulled her in for a hug and talked quietly to her for the next few minutes, telling her, “It’s good that you are sad. It means you love it, it’s important to you. That makes you play hard.” When he was done, her team gathered around her for a huge group hug.

Meanwhile, one of the girls who plays goalie on her high school team happened to be watching the game because she’d played earlier. When I told her Megan was disappointed with how she’d played, she asked if it would be ok if she talked to her for a minute. After her team dispersed, Sarah stepped in and encouraged Megan as well.

Watching it all, I was so grateful for the loss.

Sure, it was painful to watch her be sad. We were all disappointed – they’re a good team and could have continued. But in the world of youth sports where there is often so much criticism and pressure on kids, to see our daughter loved so well by her coaches and teammates, was a rare gift.

Sometimes the best memories are formed when someone loves us well in a hard place. I’m so thankful our daughter has one of those because of this team.

Promises to My Children

Hope in a Broken World

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 22, 2015
Post category:faith grief hope

A friend’s father loses his battle with cancer. News of an impending divorce. The unexpected death of a young man. Abusive words spoken and then rationalized as biblical. One after another, over the span of a week.

Broken.

We live in a broken world.

I desperately don’t want it to be. I want to have a world where fathers don’t die so young, and people keep loving one another, and children stay with us and people bless and don’t curse. I want families intact and relationships strong. I want safe, trusted, constant, faithful.

But we live in a broken world.

So I take this reality to God and say, “What do I do? How do I pray? How do I live in this?”

And He reminds me that he promises to be close to the brokenhearted and to heal them and bind them up. He tells me that He weeps with us and endures with us and walks the hard roads with us, that His compassion is endless and overflowing and His mercy starts all over again every morning. He tells me to trust in this.

So I say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Come into our brokenness. Come and be all that you promised to be so we have a solid place to stand in it.

We live in brokenness but we are not without hope.

My hope is not that the world will stop being broken, but that we will meet the lover of broken hearts in the midst of it. We will experience Him healing and binding us, bringing beauty from ashes, redeeming the darkness. We will cling to the hope that one day there will be no more brokenness, and every tear will be wiped away. All will be right.

So we keep walking through the brokenness, not in defeat but in hope. Hope in the one who is close to the brokenhearted.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Psalm 43:5

The Soul Needs to Be Seen

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 14, 2015
Post category:identity loved word of the year

The Soul Needs to Be Seen

One comment was all it took, “And underneath, I hear the emotion.”

My soul was seen.

It was an astute observation from a teammate, summarizing what I shared with our team about my experiences in 2014. He’s a tender-hearted guy, this one, and he always manages to look underneath the surface.

I teared up in response (I tear up at car commercials and national cheerleading competitions and – oh, you name it, I get verklempt). My emotions kept bubbling to the surface as we went around the room and others shared how they heard me too. Just when I thought maybe I had it together I leaked again.

Being seen like that is unnerving. I felt exposed. Undone. But the tears were happy ones. They were “you see me” tears.

It’s a powerful thing, for a soul to be seen.

Our souls are the truest parts of us. They long to be seen. We want people to know who we really are, but so often we hide behind masks and false selves that we feel are more acceptable to the world. We aren’t invited to share from the deeper, truer places in ourselves.

There’s no space. No time. But sometimes, the soul makes itself known. If we’re fortunate the person who witnesses it says, “I see who you are, and I welcome it.” And our souls are blessed.

I don’t feel that as often as I need. In the busyness of being a mama, it’s easy to miss those places where I could be seen by others. It takes intentionality of time and vulnerability – hard to find in carpool pass offs and hallway greetings and church meet and greets. This time with our team reminded me how important it is to seek out time with the dear people in our lives who see, hear, understand, know, and love us.

In Genesis 16, we find one is my favorite names for God. Sarai and Abram send Hagar away. God meets her there in her sadness and pain, and blesses her. “So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi (which means “well of the Living One who sees me”). He is El Roi, the God who sees our souls.

It does our souls good to be seen – by God and by others. In the absence of the times when we can be with others who see our souls, we remember there is always One who does. Be refreshed at the well of the Living One who sees us.

Who sees your soul?

Related posts:

The Soul Needs

The Soul Needs Space

Do It Scared

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 6, 2014
Post category:anxiety courage

So I have this ambition to write a book about transition. I’m good at ambition – I’m ambitious about a lot of things. But most of those things are within my grasp, private, typical. Or if they aren’t, no one knows about them anyway, so they don’t know that I failed.

In this, success or failure is not something I can call. It’s something others will call. Let me tell you: that terrifies me.

So I find excuses not to write. The house is dirty. I’m tired. I don’t have enough time to really get into it right now. I need to do this project for work instead. I should write a blog post (ahem).

Why? I’m afraid that when I sit down, nothing will come. Or I’ll look at it and say, “What on earth am I even trying to say here? This doesn’t make sense!” Or I won’t have enough material. Or maybe, after all my hard work, it will still fail.

I think I keep hoping that it will magically write itself. I’m discovering that my voice recorder on my phone is my best writing friend – this book might just be written in 30 second sound bites that hit me on the 417 or in the last waking moments of the day. Still, somehow those thoughts need to get organized and put down on actual paper, and that is what I have on my plan this morning.

Which brings me back to scared. But I’ve decided that my motto right now is “do it scared.” Stop waiting to feel confident or motivated or full of ideas or like you aren’t terrified to make this dream a reality. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s doing it despite the fear.

What are you doing scared today?

A Story of Two Houses

Post author:Gina B
Post published:November 5, 2013
Post category:faith identity

This is a story of two houses.

Years ago, I was introduced to the idea that from the beginning of life, we build a house for ourselves. This house is constructed of the strategies we use to make life work apart from God. It’s how we find our place, protect ourselves from pain, feel loved and needed. Our houses all look different but in many ways they are the same. They serve us well. They help us. They make us feel secure.

Along the way, if we meet God, He will offer us another house. It’s a far superior house, as all God’s resources are superior. It has a better foundation, one grounded in His truth about us. It’s not affected by wind or rain. Really, it’s a better place to live.

So sometimes we live there. But often, we’re not even aware of it, or if we are, we don’t feel a need for it. The house we’ve built seems quite sufficient.

The problem is, though, it’s not really a house. It’s a prison.

When I learned about these houses, I began to see how well my prison held me. My well-constructed strategies of staying put together and performing well keep me from being free, from being vulnerable. They kept me from the very solid existence in truth that I thought they gave me.

God’s house looked appealing. The problem was, I didn’t know how to live there. It felt too open, exposed, unknown. I looked back at my own house and thought, “Well, I can’t live there, but I don’t know how to live here.” I felt emotionally homeless.

Over the years, I have slowly been learning what it looks like to live more consistently in the house God has for me. It’s a house where life and love come not from something I do or what the world provides, but from His deep and unchanging love for me, and who He says I am.

I hoped at some point that I would be able to burn the old house down so that it was no longer an option. This seems reasonable to me – why would God want me to live somewhere else? At times I have asked Him to put me in His house, to lock the doors and board up the windows, so that I can never leave. I know that every time I try to use my own strategies to make life work, I dishonor Him. I deny His love for me. I reject the life He offers. I put myself back in prison. I want Him to keep me from doing that.

But He won’t. The choice is there every day for me. Will I choose to rely on my own ways? Or will I leave behind what feels like life and trust in that which truly is? It means living by faith, having the courage to be open, to keep my heart awake, to not retreat to safety but hold tight to Him.

What about you? Where are you living today?

Waves

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 11, 2013
Post category:grief transition

We’re not accustomed to this new normal, when leaving this house doesn’t mean enduring 24 hours of traveling hurtling through the air in a pressurized metal tube and landing on the other side of the ocean. Now it means enduring 24 hours in a car and ending up at “home.”

On the packing and shopping side, this is a relief, even if it means my “I can pack this suitcase to within 1-2 pounds of 50 without using a scale out of sheer practice” skills will go to waste. But last night, Ethan reminded me that it’s not just on the surface level that this requires some adjustment.

Right before bed, Ethan tends to evaluate how he’s feeling and give me an update (he is currently vying for “most emotionally cognizant and articulate teenage boy on the planet”). Generally, he finds he’s feeling some anxiety about the upcoming school year. This time he became aware that part of his anxiety stems from the fact that all this packing and preparing makes him feel like he really IS getting ready for that long haul to China, and it’s sad that we aren’t. I’m sad too.

Grief. It comes in waves, like you’re standing at the edge of the ocean and you don’t know when the water will come up and cover your toes, or when it will surprise you by washing up to your knees. You could stand there all day and not have it touch you, and then in a moment it soaks you.

But I feel like the tide is going out. The waves are smaller. We sometimes see them coming. They don’t knock us down anymore, just get us a little wet.

So that’s how we’re feeling as we prepare again to head back. I’m off to make one more trip to Walmart. Until we get to Florida, that is.