Find Yourself by Losing Yourself (in Love)

Over the last few months, I’ve been building a case for how we heal.

First – We heal when we can embrace joy.
Second – We experience joy when we release control.
Third – We release control through acceptance of all parts/aspects of ourselves.
Fourth – Acceptance of ourselves helps us become stable, and exercise mercy in the world.
Fifth – Exercising mercy is only possible when our lives are built on love (today’s blog).

The Art of Your Life
To start, take a few moments and reflect on your life as if it were a piece of art. What unique features does it hold? What aches and pains has life dealt you that you’d never have planned? What talents and experiences make up the parts of who you are? Notice. Pay attention. Don’t think, just see the picture.

All these items make up the landscape that is you. I want to help you love what you see.

Learning to Love
What if I told you that love wasn’t primarily a feeling. Would you believe me? It’s hard when we’re in a culture that fans the flame of love as emotion that we’re swept away with. Just notice the shows we watch and pick out how many times a young couple is swept up in emotion and can’t stop kissing while they strip each others clothes off so they can jump into bed.

Now don’t get me wrong, love does bring strong feelings of attraction sometimes. But when all that fades what you have left is choice. Do I feel awesome about my life most days, some days yes, others, no. But I choose to love and embrace my day to day anyway— even when it’s hard. My marriage is a great example—I can’t believe I’m writing this: I’m close to 25 years of marriage. In it, there have been lots of choices Amy and I have made that got us here. Love gives, sacrifices, and is often a slow investment that takes a long time to give back the benefit we desire. But love is the choice that drives a million small choices. And what those choices add up looks like two old people with white hair who know how to be with one another in a non-anxious way.

I think of a spiritual mentor of mine. His wife got a degenerative muscle disease and he cared for her many years until she was no longer able to function. Even still, he cared for her until the end. He nurtured her. Fed her. Helped bathe her. They were in their sixties when all this transpired.

I went to visit them during this time, and as we all talked, I saw an example of how I want to be — one who chooses to love, chooses to sacrifice, chooses to nurture.

Find Yourself, Lose Yourself
This year I joined the Council of Contributors to a new organization called The Soul of the Shepherd. It’s a non-profit that offers spiritual direction to those who need help. Yesterday I had the joy of participating in a conversation with pastor and author Peter Traben Haas. In our conversation he shared his faith journey—everything from being an evangelical pastor, to moving in and out of the mystical and contemplative traditions, to learning from a Shaman he randomly met in a far off city, to his recent journey as a Presbyterian pastor in Colorado. It was such an engaging ride.

I asked him what the best parts of these belief systems were that we could learn from. His answer was that we learn from Shamanism about the importance of the body and it’s place in our faith (Christians in particular tend to be too caught up in our heads with right answers backed by bible texts). So too, we learn from mindfulness how to be present with ourselves and our thoughts, and to accept things as they are—and to become our best and healthiest selves.

What I’ve written above are my thoughts on his answers, not direct quotes. But here’s the best part. He said that these things are important because they help us find a healthier version of ourselves. He shared how most in our culture are so fragmented that they don’t know what a “healthiest self” is. We don’t know our “true selves,” because we’re lost in the buzz of everything else. Then he said something that was so wonderful that it made me shiver.

“But Jesus taught us something different,” he said. “That we must die to ourselves, we must lose ourselves…”

Are you following? You’ve got to find yourself—YES. But there’s a next step. You’ve got to get over yourself, lose yourself, and learn to love. It’s this way with yourself and your life. Get it all healthy–YES (it never ends), and then get over it, move on and begin to love.

Here’s just one way I think this looks.

Stop Talking & Thinking, Start Looking
To learn to love your life, you’ve got to get out of your head. Do you know why so many good thoughts often come in the shower? Because it’s sensory. Have you ever tried to read or work while you eat? It’s hard and takes focus because you’re turning off your senses and turning on your rationality. To quote Richard Beck:

“Our faith will struggle when it become excessively verbal and rational. In my experience, Christians who struggle with disenchantment lean too heavily on words. Too many books and podcasts. Too much talking. Disenchantment is often a sign that you’ve lost touch with the aesthetic, ineffable aspects of faith. If you’re struggling with disenchantment, odds are you’re thinking rather than paying attention” (Hunting Magic Eels, p. 88).

Do you want to build your life on love? Stop thinking so much and start paying attention. Don’t read books through your lunch break or listen to podcasts while you’re driving. Try the quiet. Try humming. Don’t check your socials while you’re in line at the grocery store. Don’t scroll on your phone when you’re in bed with your loved one. Pay attention. In other words, lose yourself. Make a little space to turn off yourself, and turn on your attention to the life God has actually given you. If you can learn to do this, I promise, you’ll recover a kind of enchantment you never thought was possible.

All the pain and infighting we see right now in our culture is rooted in people’s inability to lose themselves. All our opinions, ideas, layers of ego–it’s not who we are. Lose it. Learn to live and embrace what’s around and you’ll find you’ll be learning to love.

Isn’t it funny that a series that began on healing ends here? Yes. The journey inward results in finding yourself, but then losing the very thing you found. What do you have left? You live and you follow something/someone greater than yourself. That means losing your ideas, or your political persuasion, getting out of your head, and into your life.

That’s it for this series. My next few blogs I want to write about what it looks like to live a life of enchantment because I believe we are a deeply disenchanted culture that’s ready for more. Stay tuned.

BTW – have you heard season two of the podcast yet? Check it out here.